| Malay Bahasa Melayu بهاس ملايو |
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|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and southern Philippines. | |
| Total speakers: | 23.6 million | |
| Ranking: | 53 | |
| Language family: | Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (MP) Nuclear MP Sunda-Sulawesi Malayic Malayan Local Malay Malay |
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| Writing system: | Rumi (Latin alphabet) (official in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia; co-official in Brunei) and Jawi (Arabic script) (co-official in Brunei and Malaysia). Historically written in Pallava, Kawi and Rencong | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, East Timor (working language) | |
| Regulated by: | Majlis Bahasa Brunei - Indonesia - Malaysia (Brunei - Indonesia - Malaysia Language Council — MABBIM), Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (Institute of Language and Literature) Pusat Bahasa, Indonesia | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | ms | |
| ISO 639-2: | may (B) | msa (T) |
| ISO 639-3: | variously: msa – Malay (generic) mly – Malay (specific) btj – Bacanese Malay bve – Berau Malay bvu – Bukit Malay coa – Cocos Islands Malay jax – Jambi Malay meo – Kedah Malay mqg – Kota Bangun Kutai Malay xmm – Manado Malay max – North Moluccan Malay mfa – Pattani Malay msi – Sabah Malay vkt – Tenggarong Kutai Malay |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Malay language (ISO 639-1 code: ms)[1][2] is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people and people of other ethnic groups who reside in the Malay Peninsula, southern Thailand, parts of the Philippines, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau Islands and parts of the coast of Borneo.[3].
Malay is an official language of Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore. In Indonesia and East Timor, the language is formally referred to as Bahasa Indonesia, which literally translates as "Indonesian language." It is also called Bahasa Kebangsaan (National Language) and Bahasa Persatuan/Pemersatu (Unifying Language) in Indonesia. In Malaysia, the language is now officially known as Bahasa Malaysia, ("Malaysian language".) Singapore, Brunei and southern Thailand refer to the language as Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language").
In Malaysia, the term Bahasa Malaysia, which was introduced by the National Language Act of 1967, was in use until the 1990s, when most academics and government officials reverted to "Bahasa Melayu," used in the Malay version of the Federal Constitution. According to Article 152 of the Federal Constitution, Bahasa Melayu is the official language of Malaysia. "Bahasa Kebangsaan" (National Language) was also used at one point during the 1970s.
Indonesia pronounced Malay its official language when it gained independence, calling it Bahasa Indonesia. However, the language had been used as the lingua franca throughout the archipelago since the 15th century. Since 1928, nationalists and young people throughout the Indonesian archipelago have declared it to be Indonesia's only official language, as proclaimed in the Sumpah Pemuda "Youth Vow."
Indonesian and Malay are separated by some centuries of different vocabulary development. Indonesian is distinct by its vocabulary from Malay as spoken in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, where the language is known simply as Bahasa Melayu. Bahasa Melayu is defined as Brunei's official language in the country's 1959 Constitution.
Some Malay dialects, however, show only limited mutual intelligibility with the standard language; for example, Kelantanese pronunciation is difficult even for some Malaysians to understand, while Indonesian has a lot of words unique to it that are unfamiliar to other speakers of Malay who are not from Indonesia.
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 Hokkien dialect, which is mostly spoken in the former Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca.
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The history of the Malay language can be divided into four periods: Old Malay, the Transitional Period, the Malacca Period, and Late Modern Malay.
Old Malay is unintelligible to a speaker of modern Malay. It was heavily influenced by Sanskrit, the lingua franca of Hinduism and Buddhism. The earliest known inscription in the Old Malay language was found in Sumatra, written in Pallava Script[4] and dates back to 7th century - known as Kedukan Bukit Inscription, it was discovered by the Dutchman M. Batenburg on 29 November, 1920, at Kedukan Bukit, South Sumatra, on the banks of the River Tatang, a tributary of the River Musi. It is a small stone of 45 by 80 cm.
The Malay language came into widespread use as the trade language of the Sultanate of Malacca (1402 – 1511). During this period, the Malay language developed rapidly from influence of Islamic literature. The development changed the nature of the language with massive infusion of Arabic, Persian and later Hindi vocabularies. Under the Sultanate of Malacca the language evolved into a form recognizable to speakers of modern Malay.
Malay is a member of the Austronesian family of languages which includes languages from Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia. Malagasy, a geographic outlier spoken in Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is also a member of this linguistic family.
Malay belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the family, which includes the Languages of the Philippines and Malagasy, which is further subdivided into Outer Hesperonesian languages and Nuclear Malayo-Polynesian of which Malay is a member. Malay's closest relatives therefore include Javanese, Acehnese, Chamorro and Palauan.
Although each language of the family is mutually unintelligible, their similarities are rather striking. Many roots have come virtually unchanged from their common Austronesian ancestor. There are many cognates found in the languages' words for kinship, health, body parts and common animals. Numbers, especially, show remarkable similarities.
Malay is normally written using Latin alphabet called Rumi, although a modified Arabic script called Jawi also exists. Rumi is official in Malaysia and Singapore, and Indonesian has a different official orthography also using the Latin script. Rumi and Jawi are co-official in Brunei. Efforts are currently being undertaken to preserve Jawi script and to revive its use amongst Malays in Malaysia, and students taking Malay language examination in Malaysia have the option of answering questions using Jawi script. The Latin alphabet, however, is still the most commonly used script in Malaysia, both for official and informal purposes.
Historically, Malay has been written using various types of script. Before the introduction of Arabic script in the Malay region, Malay was written using Pallava, Kawi and Rencong script and are still in use today by the Champa Malay in Vietnam and Cambodia. Old Malay was written using Pallava and Kawi script, as evident from several inscription stones in the Malay region. Starting from the era of kingdom of Pasai and throughout the golden age of the Sultanate of Malacca, Jawi gradually replaced these scripts as the most commonly used script in the Malay region.
The undecifered inscription on the Singapore Stone is thought to be in Malay.
The extent to which Malay is used in these countries varies depending on historical and cultural circumstances. Bahasa Melayu is the national language in Malaysia by Article 152 of the Constitution of Malaysia, and became the sole official language in West Malaysia in 1968, and in East Malaysia gradually from 1974. English continues, however, to be widely used in professional and commercial fields and in the superior courts. Other minority languages are also commonly used by the country's large ethnic minorities. The situation in Brunei is similar to that of Malaysia.
In Singapore, Malay was historically the lingua franca among people of different nationalities. Although this has largely given way to English, Malay still retains the status of national language and the national anthem, Majulah Singapura, is entirely in Malay. In addition, parade commands in the military, police and civil defence are given only in Malay.
Most residents of the five southernmost provinces of Thailand — a region that, for the most part, used to be part of an ancient Malay kingdom called Pattani — speak a dialect of Malay called Yawi (not to be confused with Jawi), which is similar to Kelantanese Malay, but the language has no official status or recognition.
Owing to earlier contact with the Philippines, Malay words — such as dalam hati (sympathy), luwalhati (glory), tengah hari (midday), sedap (delicious) — have evolved and been integrated into Tagalog and other Philippine languages.
By contrast, Indonesian has successfully become the lingua franca for its disparate islands and ethnic groups, in part because the colonial language, Dutch, is no longer commonly spoken. (In East Timor, which was governed as a province of Indonesia from 1976 to 1999, Indonesian is widely spoken and recognized under its Constitution as a 'working language'.)
Besides Bahasa Indonesia, which developed from the Riau dialect, there are many Malay dialects spoken in Indonesia [1], divided into western and eastern groups. Western Malay is predominantly spoken in Sumatra, and known as Sumatran dialects, such as: Riau, Langkat, Palembang and Jambi. Minangkabau and Bengkulu are believed to be Sumatran Malay descendants. Meanwhile Jakarta dialect (known as Betawi) also belongs to the western Malay group.
The eastern dialects are spoken in the easternmost part of the Indonesian archipelago and include: Manado dialect [2] (in north Sulawesi) and Maluku, North Maluku and Papua dialects.
The differences among both groups are quite observable. For example the word 'kita' means "we, us" in western, but means "I, me" in Manado, whereas "we, us" in Manado is 'torang' and Ambon 'katong' (originally abbreviated from Malay 'kita orang' (means "we people"). Another difference is the lack of possessive pronouns (and suffixes) in eastern dialects. Manado uses the verb 'pe' and Ambon 'pu' (from Malay 'punya', meaning "to have") to mark possession. So "my name" and "our house" are translated in western Malay as 'namaku' and 'rumah kita' but 'kita pe nama' and 'torang pe rumah' in Manado and 'beta pu nama', 'katong pu rumah' in Ambon dialect.
The pronunciation may vary in western dialects, especially the pronunciation of words ending in the vowel 'a'. For example Malaysian pronounce 'kita' as /kitə/, Riau /kita/, Palembang /kito/ and Betawi as /kitɛ/.
Betawi and eastern dialects are sometimes regarded as Malay creole, because the speakers are not ethnically Malay.
English = Where are you going on the bicycle? May I follow you?
Note: this article uses the orthography of Malaysian Malay. For Indonesian orthography, see Indonesian language.
| Bilabial | Labio- Dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Post- Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ny /ɲ/ | ng /ŋ/ | ||||||||||||||
| Plosive | p /p/ | b /b/ | t /t/ | d /d/ | k /k/ | g /g/ | ||||||||||||
| Affricate | c /tʃ/ | j /dʒ/ | ||||||||||||||||
| Fricative | f /f/ | v /v/ | s /s/ | z /z/ | sy /ʃ, ʂ, sj/ | h /h/ | ||||||||||||
| Approximant | y /j/ | w /w/ | ||||||||||||||||
| Lateral | l /l/ | |||||||||||||||||
| Trill | r /r/ | |||||||||||||||||
Orthographic Note:
| Height | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i /i/ | u /u/ | |
| Mid | e /e, ɛ/ | e /ə/ | o /o, ɔ/ |
| Open | a /a/ | a /ɑ/ |
| Orthography | IPA |
|---|---|
| ai | /aɪ̯, ai/ |
| au | /aʊ̯, au/ |
| ua | /ua/ |
There are two vowels represented by the letter "e", i.e. /e, ɛ/ and /ə/. Learners of Malay are expected to distinguish between the two sounds while learning each new word.
In some parts of Peninsular Malaysia, especially in the central and southern regions, most words which end with the letter a tend to be pronounced as /ə/.
Malay is an agglutinative language, and new words are formed by three methods. New words can be created by attaching affixes onto a root word (affixation), formation of a compound word (composition), or repetition of words or portions of words (reduplication).
Root words are either nouns or verbs, which can be affixed to derive new words, e.g. masak (to cook) yields memasak (cooks, is cooking, etc.), memasakkan (cooks, is cooking for etc.), dimasak (cooked - passive) as well as pemasak (cook - person), masakan (cooking, cookery). Many initial consonants undergo mutation when prefixes are added: e.g. sapu (sweep) becomes penyapu (broom); panggil (to call) becomes memanggil (calls, is calling, etc.), tapis (sieve) becomes menapis (sieves, is sieving, etc.)
Other examples of the use of affixes to change the meaning of a word can be seen with the word ajar (teach):
There are four types of affixes, namely prefixes (awalan), suffixes (akhiran), circumfixes (apitan) and infixes (sisipan). These affixes are categorised into noun affixes, verb affixes, and adjective affixes.
Noun affixes are affixes that form nouns upon addition to root words. The following are examples of noun affixes:
| Type of noun affixes | Affix | Example of root word | Example of derived word |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prefix | pe(N)- | duduk (sit) | penduduk (population) |
| ke- | hendak (want) | kehendak (desire) | |
| juru- | acara (event) | juruacara (event host) | |
| Infix | -el- | tunjuk (point) | telunjuk (index finger, command) |
| -em- | kelut (dishevelled) | kemelut (chaos, crisis) | |
| -er- | gigi (teeth) | gerigi (toothed blade) | |
| Suffix | -an | bangun (wake up, raise) | bangunan (building) |
| Circumfix | ke-...-an | raja (king) | kerajaan (kingdom) |
| pe(N)-...-an | kerja (work) | pekerjaan (occupation) |
(N) and (R) indicate that if a word begins with certain letters (most often vowels or consonants k, p, s, t), the letter will either be omitted or will undergo nasal mutation or be replaced by the letter l.
Similarly, verb affixes are attached to root words to form verbs. In Malay, there are:
| Type of verb affixes | Affix | Example of root word | Example of derived word |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prefix | be(R)- | ajar (teach) | belajar (to study) - Intransitive |
| me(N)- | tolong (help) | menolong (to help) - Active transitive | |
| di- | ambil (take) | diambil (is being taken) - Passive transitive | |
| mempe(R)- | kemas (tidy up, orderly) | memperkemas (to arrange further) | |
| dipe(R)- | dalam (deep) | diperdalam (is being further deepen) | |
| te(R)- | makan (eat) | termakan (to have accidentally eaten) | |
| Suffix | -kan | letak (place, keep) | letakkan (keep) - Imperative transitive |
| -i | jauh (far) | jauhi (avoid) - Imperative transitive | |
| Circumfix | be(R)-...-an | pasang (pair) | berpasangan (in pairs) |
| be(R)-...-kan | tajuk (title) | bertajukkan (to be titled, to entitle) | |
| me(N)-...-kan | pasti (sure) | memastikan (to make sure) | |
| me(N)-...-i | teman (company) | menemani (to accompany) | |
| mempe(R)-...-kan | guna (use) | mempergunakan (to utilise, to exploit) | |
| mempe(R)-...-i | ajar (teach) | mempelajari (to study) | |
| ke-...-an | hilang (disappear) | kehilangan (to lose) | |
| di-...-i | sakit (pain) | disakiti (to be hurt by) | |
| di-...-kan | benar (right) | dibenarkan (is allowed to) | |
| dipe(R)-...-kan | kenal (know, recognise) | diperkenalkan (is being introduced) |
Adjective affixes are attached to root words to form adjectives:
| Type of adjective affixes | Affix | Example of root word | Example of derived word |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prefix | te(R)- | kenal (know) | terkenal (famous) |
| se- | lari (run) | selari (parallel) | |
| Infix | -el- | serak (disperse) | selerak (messy) |
| -em- | cerlang (radiant bright) | cemerlang (bright, excellent) | |
| -er- | sabut (husk) | serabut (dishevelled) | |
| Circumfix | ke-...-an | barat (west) | kebaratan (westernized) |
In addition to these affixes, Malay also has a lot of borrowed affixes from other languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic and English. For example maha-, pasca-, eka-, bi-, anti-, pro- etc.
In Malay, new words can be formed by joining two or more root words. Compound words, when they exist freely in a sentence, are often written separately. Compound words are only attached to each other when they are bound by circumfix or when they are already considered as stable words.
For example, the word kereta which means car and api which means fire, are compounded to form a new word kereta api (train). Similarly, ambil alih (take over) is formed using the root words ambil (take) and alih (move), but will link together when a circumfix is attached to it, i.e. pengambilalihan (takeover). Certain stable words, such as kakitangan (personnel), and kerjasama (corporation), are spelled as one word even when they exist freely in sentences.
There are four types of words reduplication in Malay, namely
Another distinguishing feature of Malay is its use of measure words (penjodoh bilangan). In this way, it is similar to many other languages of Asia, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Bengali.
Measure words cannot be translated into English. Examples are :
| measure word | used for measuring | literary translation | example |
|---|---|---|---|
| buah | thing (in general) | 'fruit' | dua buah meja (two tables), lima buah rumah (five houses) |
| orang | person, human | 'person' | seorang lelaki (a man), enam orang petani (six farmers), seratus orang murid (a hundred students) |
| butir | rounded object | 'grain' | sebutir telur (an egg) |
In Malay, there are 4 parts of speech:
There are 16 types of function words in Malay which perform a grammatical function in a sentence. [5] Amongst these are conjunctions, interjections, prepositions, negations and determiners.
There are two negation words in Malay, that is bukan and tidak. Bukan is used to negate noun phrases and prepositions in a predicate, whereas tidak is used to negate verbs and adjectives phrases in a predicate.
| Subject | Negation | Predicate |
|---|---|---|
| Lelaki yang berjalan dengan Birsilah itu (That boy who is walking with Birsilah) |
bukan (is not) |
teman lelakinya (her boyfriend) |
| Surat itu (The letter) |
bukan (is not) |
daripada teman penanya di Perancis (from his penpal in France) |
| Pelajar-pelajar itu (Those students) |
tidak (do not) |
mengikuti peraturan sekolah (obey school regulations) |
| Penguasaan Bahasa Melayunya (His command of Malay language) |
tidak (is not) |
sempurna (perfect) |
The negative word bukan however, can be used before verb phrases and adjective phrases if the sentence shows contradictions.
| Subject | Negation | Predicate | Contradiction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Karangannya (His composition) |
bukan (is not) |
baik sangat, (very good,) |
tetapi dia mendapat markah yang baik (but he received good marks) |
| Kilang itu (The factory) |
bukan (is not) |
menghasilkan kereta Kancil, (producing Kancil cars) |
sebaliknya menghasilkan Proton Wira (instead is producing Proton Wira) |
Malay does not make use of grammatical gender, and there are only a few words that use natural gender; the same word is used for he and she or for his and her. Most of the words that refer to people (family terms, professions, etc.) have a form that does not distinguish between the sexes. For example, adik can both refer to a younger sibling of either sex. In order to specify the natural gender of a noun, an adjective has to be added: adik laki-laki corresponds to "brother" but really means "male younger sibling". There are some words that are gendered, for instance puteri means "princess", and putera means "prince"; words like these are usually absorbed from other languages (in these cases, from Sanskrit).
Plurals are often expressed by means of reduplication, but only when the plural is not implied in the context. For example, the plural of 'cawan', which means "cup", would be 'cawan-cawan'. This can be shortened to 'cecawan', but this only applies to a limited number of words. Reduplication to mark pluralization is often in complementary distribution with numeral markers, for example "one thousand cups" would be 'seribu cawan' and not 'seribu cawan-cawan'.
Verbs are not inflected for person or number, and they are not marked for tense; tense is instead denoted by time adverbs (such as "yesterday") or by other tense indicators, such as sudah, "already". On the other hand, there is a complex system of verb affixes to render nuances of meaning and denote active and passive voices or intentional and accidental moods. Some of these affixes are ignored in daily conversations.
The basic word order is Subject Verb Object. Adjectives, demonstrative pronouns and possessive pronouns follow the noun they describe.
The Malay language has many words borrowed from Arabic (mainly religious terms), Sanskrit, Persian, Portuguese, Dutch, certain Chinese dialects and more recently, English (in particular many scientific and technological terms). Some examples follow:
There are some Malay words which are spelled exactly the same as the English word e.g. hospital.
Some Malay words have been borrowed into English. See the list of words of Malay origin at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sister project.
Malay has also heavily influenced the forms of colloquial English spoken in Malaysia (Manglish).
In Malaysia, to greet somebody with "Selamat pagi" or "Selamat sejahtera" would be considered very formal, and the borrowed word "Hi" would be more usual among friends; similarly "Bye-bye" is often used when taking one's leave.
| Malay Phrase | IPA | English Translation |
| Selamat datang | /səlamat dataŋ/ | Welcome (Used as a greeting) |
| Selamat jalan | /səlamat dʒalan/ | Have a safe journey (equivalent to "goodbye", used by the party staying) |
| Selamat tinggal | /səlamat tiŋgal/ | Goodbye (Lit translation: "Good stay", used by the party going) |
| Terima kasih | /tərima kasih/ | Thank you |
| Sama-sama | /sama sama/ | You are welcome (as in a response to Thank You) |
| Selamat pagi | /səlamat pagi/ | Good morning |
| Selamat petang | /səlamat pətaŋ/ | Good afternoon/evening (note that 'Selamat petang' must not be used at night as in English. For a general greeting, use 'Selamat sejahtera') |
| Selamat sejahtera | /səlamat sədʒahtəra/ | Greetings (formal) |
| Selamat malam | /səlamat malam/ | Good night |
| Jumpa lagi | See you again | |
| Siapakah nama awak?/Nama awak apa? | What is your name? | |
| Nama saya ... | My name is ... (The relevant name is placed in front. For example, if your name was Munirah, then you would introduce yourself by saying "Nama saya Munirah", which translates to "My name is Munirah") | |
| Apa khabar? | How are you? / What's up? (literally, "What news?") | |
| Khabar baik | Fine, good news | |
| Saya sakit | I'm sick | |
| Ya | /ja/ | Yes |
| Tidak ("tak" colloquially) | No | |
| Saya sayang awak | I love you (In a more of a family or affectionate sort of love, e.g.: mother to daughter) | |
| Saya cinta awak, Munirah | I love you, Munirah (romantic love. Here the person name is Munirah) | |
| Saya benci awak, Birsilah | I hate you, Birsilah (The name of the person here referred here is Birsilah) | |
| Saya tidak faham (or simply "tak faham" colloquially) | I do not understand | |
| Saya tidak tahu (or "tak tau" colloquially or "sik tau" in Sarawak) | I do not know | |
| (Minta) maaf | I apologise ('minta' is to request) | |
| Tumpang tanya | "May I ask...?" (used when trying to ask something) | |
| (Minta) tolong | Please help (me) ('Tolong!' on its own just means "help") | |
| Apa | What | |
| Tiada | Nothing |
Contemporary usage of Malay includes a set of slang words, formed by innovations of standard Malay words or incorporated from other languages, spoken by the urban speech community, which may not be familiar to the older generation, e.g. awek (girl); balak (guy); usha (survey); skodeng (peep); cun (pretty); poyo/slenge (horrible, low-quality) etc. New plural pronouns have also been formed out of the original pronouns and the word orang ("people"), i.e. kitorang (kita + orang, the exclusive "we", in place of kami); korang (kau + orang, "you"); diorang or derang (dia + orang, "they").
The Malay-speaking community, especially in Kuala Lumpur, also code-switch between English and Malay in their speech, forming Bahasa Rojak. Examples of the borrowings are: Bestlah tempat ni (This place is cool);kau ni terror lah (How daring you are; you're fabulous). Consequently, this phenomenon has raised the displeasure of language purists in Malaysia, in their effort to uphold the proper use of the national language.
The following are some contractions used by Malay-speaking youths:
| Non-formal Word |
Formal Word |
English Translation |
|---|---|---|
| bleh | boleh | can, able to |
| ko | engkau | you |
| nape | kenapa | why |
| gi | pergi | go |
| kat | dekat/di | at |
| ne | mana | where |
| tau | tahu | know |
| je | sahaja | only |
| awek | gadis | girl/grilfriend |
| balak | pemuda | boy/boyfriend |
| skodeng | mengintai | peep |
| cun | cantik | pretty |
| jom | mari | let's go |
| poyo/selenge | buruk | horrible |
| blah | beredar | go away |
| meh | mari | come |
| apsal | apa pasal | why |
| tak yah | tidak payah | not necessary |
| pastu | selepas itu | after that |
| amik | ambil | take |
| pukimak | celaka | damn/fuck |
| noki | pondan | faggot |
There are many, different Malay dictionaries. In Malaysia, the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) dictionary is the chief arbiter for the language, and is considered the authority in defining Malay usage. Some other dictionaries are: