| Malaysian | |
|---|---|
| Bahasa Malaysia بهاس مليسيا |
|
| Spoken in | Brunei Malaysia Singapore |
| Native speakers | 10.3 million (no date)[1] |
| Language family |
Austronesian
|
| Writing system | Rumi (Latin alphabet) and Jawi (Arabic script) [2]). |
| Official status | |
| Official language in | Malaysia Singapore |
| Regulated by | Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (Institute of Language and Literature) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | either: zlm – Malaysian Malay zsm – Standard Malaysian |
Malaysian or Standard Malay is the official language of Malaysia and a standardized form of the Malay language of the Austronesian family. It is over 80% cognate with Indonesian and is spoken natively by over 10 million people. As a second language, it is spoken by an estimated 18 million, mostly Malaysians from ethnic minorities.[3]
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In 1957, Article 152 of the Federation designated Malay as the official language. Between 1986 and 2007, the official term Bahasa Malaysia was replaced by "Bahasa Melayu". Today, Bahasa Malaysia is now once again the government's preferred designation for the "Bahasa Kebangsaan" (National Language).[4] The language is sometimes simply referred to as Bahasa or BM.[5]
The Malaysian language is normally written using Latin alphabet called Rumi, although a modified Arabic script called Jawi also exists. Rumi is official while efforts are currently being undertaken to preserve Jawi script and to revive its use in Malaysia. The Latin alphabet, however, is still the most commonly used script in Malaysia, both for official and informal purposes.
The Malaysian language 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 Malaysian language has many words borrowed from Arabic (mainly religious terms), Sanskrit, Tamil, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Dutch, certain Chinese dialects and more recently, English (in particular many scientific and technological terms). Modern Malaysian malay also heavily influenced by Indonesian.[6]
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, such as awek (girl), balak (guy) or cun (pretty). New plural pronouns have also been formed out of the original pronouns and the word orang (person), such as kitorang (kita + orang, the exclusive "we", in place of kami) or diorang (dia + orang, "they"). Code-switching between English and Malaysian and the use of novel loanwords is widespread, forming Bahasa Rojak. Consequently, this phenomenon has raised the displeasure of language purists in Malaysia, in their effort to uphold the proper use of the national language.