Learning the Malay Language

The Malay language also known locally as "Bahasa Melayu" or "the language of the Malay people". It is the mother tongue of the Malay people who are native to the Malay peninsula, Borneo, southern Thailand, Singapore and parts of Sumatra. It is the official language of Malaysia, and Brunei, and one of the four official languages of Singapore. It is also used as a working language in East Timor. The official standard for Malay, as agreed upon by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, is Bahasa Riau, the language of the Riau Archipelago, long considered the birthplace of the Malay language.

In Malaysia, it is known as Bahasa Malaysia or Malaysian language, even though it is, in fact, Malay. Similarly, Indonesia adopted a form of Malay as its official language upon independence, naming it Bahasa Indonesia. In Singapore and Brunei it is known simply as Malay or Bahasa Melayu. The reason for adopting these terms is political rather than a reflection of linguistic distinctiveness, as Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia are in fact versions of the same language. An exception would be the dialect spoken in the Malaysian states of Kelantan, Kedah, Perlis and Negeri Sembilan which has very difficult intelligibility with other forms of Malay. Javanese Malay tends to have a lot of words unique to it which will be unfamiliar to other speakers of Malay. The language spoken by the Peranakan (Straits Chinese, a hybrid of Chinese settlers from the Ming Dynasty and local Malays) is a unique patois of Malay and the Chinese Dialect of Hokkien, which is mostly spoken in the former Straits Settlements of Penang and Melaka. The use of this interesting language is dying out however, with the Peranakan now choosing to speak Hokkien or English.

Malay is an agglutinative language, meaning that the meaning of the word can be changed by adding the necessary prefixes or suffixes. Generally the root word tends to be a verb with quantitative prefixes added to nouns which are root words.

The key differences between Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia is that the Malay Language is influenced by the British and Indonesian language by the former Dutch occupation. Extent of use The extent to which Bahasa is used in these countries varies depending on historical and cultural circumstances. Bahasa Malaysia became the sole official language of Malaysia in 1968, but English is still widely used in the cities, especially by the minority Chinese and Indian communities, and because of its importance as the language of international business, and the situation in Brunei is similar.

Source (Above): Adapted from Fact Index

Source (Above): Tourism Malaysia