Talk:Malagasy language

Hmm...not nearly as much information as I was hoping for. Surely the English speaking world knows more about the Malagasy language than this? More on phonology, grammar, anything! Is Malagasy isolating or agglutinative? Ergative or nominative-accustaive? How do nouns and verbs inflect, if at all? Genders? And so many other basic questions...--C.M.67.170.176.203 16:14, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

There are several issues with this page:

1) Madagascar is home to around 17 million people, most of whom speak Malagasy, not 6 million as stated in the article. 2) I have heard of between 18-21 tribes in Madagascar, not 36 as stated in the article. I say 18-21 instead of one number because it is not generally agreed upon. --Brownlemur 20:28, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Malagasy literature?

Some open questions:

• When did Malagasy evolve as a written language?
• Have other alphabet than the latin alphabet been used?
• What was the written language used by the Merina monarchy? (Or were these people illiterate?)

-- Petri Krohn 14:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

When the French established Fort-Dauphin in the 17th century, they found an arabico-malagasy script in use. The oldest known document in that script is a short Malagasy-Dutch vocabulary from the early 17th century first published in 1908 by Gabriel Ferrand. Radama I, the first literate representative of the Merina monarchy, though extensively versed in the arabico-malagasy tradition, opted for alphabetization in Latin characters and invited the Protestant London Missionary Society to establish schools and churches. Eklir (talk) 20:32, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I corrected Radama I of Madagascar based on this. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 23:50, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

P.S. - I see you have already expanded this article. One question remains: what is the relationship between the Sorabe alphabet, the Ajami script and the arabico-malagasy script? -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:01, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Malagasy Scouting

Can someone render "Be Prepared", the Scout Motto, into Malagasy? Thanks! Chris 03:27, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

We say : voahomana Jagwar - ((talk)) 17:52, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Redundant categorization

There is no reason for a language to appear in both a sub-group category and in the main language family. I am gradually removing most individual languages from Category:Austronesian languages. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:07, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. kwami (talk) 19:50, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome! I'll appreciate your assistance at Talk:Borneo-Philippines languages. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:05, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I feel that the procedure of removing individual languages from main language family categories is scientifically unwarranted, especially in cases where subgrouping techniques are contested as is the case for Austronesian where foundations for classification are unstable and moving, especially since techniques, in the absence of phylogenetical certainties, took a definitely typological bent. The procedure also conflicts with other editorial decisions that were made when allowing cross-referencings such as List of Austronesian languages and List of Austronesian regions. Eklir (talk) 21:53, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Help

Is there a free translator from English to Malagasy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.33.56.43 (talk) 14:50, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is one : in freelang, this is the link :

• Malagasy-French online dictionnary

-- 83.199.66.126 (talk) 11:03, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

PS: I added it in the main article as External link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.199.66.126 (talk) 11:04, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

This one does English, French and Malagasy: http://www.encyclopediemalgache.org/bins/alphaLists?lang=fr

Lemurbaby (talk) 16:30, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

IPA

We should use the IPA for sentences in mapagasy. Jagwar - ((talk)) 17:56, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The IPA for the sentences could use a bit of elucidation. What exactly do superscripted vowels denote, for example? This might be a specialist notation, and that's fine, but anyone who knows general IPA should (in theory) be able to pronounce those, and there ought to be a key somewhere if it is a specialist notation. Also, is this an informal pronunciation? That's mostly out of curiosity; the preceding section notes that vowels are devoiced or elided when speaking rapidly, and it looks like that has been applied everywhere. Vaaarr (talk) 17:04, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, superscripted vowels are used here to note the deformation of the consonant like « ^j » in the palatalized t (« t^j »). They are generally omitted when speaking rapidly but they must be pronounced when speaking slowly or loudly, or when the following word starts with a consonant. The phonetic transcription of fanorona ([fḁˈnurnḁ]) is incorrect if ḁ is a elisioned vowel : labial deformaiton has been omitted (It should be /fa.ˈnu.r^w.nḁ/). --Jagwar - (( talk )) 18:56, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Interesting then. It might be good for the sake of the article to give the table a second column of pronunciation, so that the rapid pronunciation is listed alongside the careful pronunciation. Few articles get to that level of detail in terms of variation, which is something that pains me. A propos Jagwar, je vois que vous êtes un(e) francophone. Je sais aussi bien parler français, pas très courant, mais en tout cas, en train de discuter ceci vous pouvez utiliser celle que vous trouvez la plus agréable, pour faciliter la communication, pourvu qu'on fournit des traductions. [Approximate translation: Jagwar and I might talk in French on this point to ease communication, since we both turn out to be Francophones, and we should provide translations] Vaaarr (talk) 23:36, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

(j'ai corrigé les fautes d'accents que vous avez commis, and I made translation of the words which may be difficult to be understood) Il est bien rare de discuter en français sur la wikipédia anglophone, mais si vous pouvez comprendre ce que j'écris, il n'y a pas de quoi (vous me facilitez (make easy) vraiment la communication, croyez-moi) ; alors, commençons : l'élision des voyelles (vowel) se fait généralement lorsqu'ils sont à la fin des pour la voyelle finale a ; et à la fin du mot pour les voyelles y et o (qui sont respectivement prononcées /i/ ou /j/ et /u/ ou /w/) sauf pour les mots monosyllabiques tels que ny ou encore vy. La règle est simple, et en tout cas, logique. Une règle (rule) équivalente existe en français pour la lettre e (prononcé dans 99 pour cent des cas /ə/ à la fin des mots)

trans : the elision of vowels occurs at the end of sentences for letter a and at the end of words for o and y, except for monosyllabics like ny, vy where tonic accent must be put). An equivalent rule exists in french for the letter e.

Bien cordialement, --Jagwar - (( talk )) 11:16, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Corriger des fautes, ca m'est egal, les "fautes" ne sont que la faute de mon ordinateur, qui n'ont pas un methode facile pour ajouter des lettres avec accent. Je comprends le francais specialise pour des etudes linguistiques, alors il ne vaut pas le peine d'ajouter les traductions pour ces mots. Si on continuera comme ca, le francais dominera la page, alors nous devrions continuer a mon sandbox, j'ai etabli un espace pour ca. [trans: some banter, and then: this might get long, so we should move this discussion to a space that I set up on my sandbox so that French doesn't dominate the page.] Vaaarr (talk) 23:14, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Links to Malagasy Audio

Hi all - Regarding the link to Malagasy audio just added to the page, it's true that it does not work consistently and I don't understand why. But when it does work, we have some much needed audio for this page. Perhaps we should unlink it after we are able to either find a better outside link or can find someone willing to record pronunciations for this page. Any volunteers or suggestions for Malagasy audio? Lemurbaby (talk) 15:52, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Lemurbaby! On my personal website I am running an online Malagasy-Czech dictionary with pronunciation recs. However, on the English lang. version of my page I have also a pure list of words with pronunciation recorded by a native Malagasy - by now about 650 recorded words, still working on others. The address is [http://dominicweb.eu/en/malgastina/slovnik-malgastiny] ... see if this is of any use for you. All the best Tominiko (talk) 04:34, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Early references

In Sir Thomas Herbert's travel literature Some yeares travels into divers parts of Afrique and Asia he describes the language of the native people of Madagascar which can only be assumed to be the Malagasy language. He writes down the numbers 1 to 10 which bear partial resemblence to Malagasy:

...neceſſity has taught them ſome parts of the rudiments of Arithmetick; the number 10. limits their invention, Iſſo,1., Tone,2., Tello,3., Effad,4., Fruto,5., Woubla,6., Sidda,7., Fonlo,8., Malo,9., Nel,10.,...

Jakeybean (talk) 19:47, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Reeland

Note that van Reeland seems to have mentioned the Malayan languages only, and not the alleged Austronesian group. At the least, we need a quotation from the Dutchman. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 12:33, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Dempwolff, in 1920, seems to have been the first to refer to Austronesian. I am not sure that van Reeland even referred to Polynesian.