Talk:Malay language

The loss of Malay's noun prefix in this article

I have added the awalan "juru-" into this article, since it is one of the five Malay noun prefixes. To note, Malay has five awalan or prefixes such as peN-, pe-, peR-, ke-, and juru-.

This was edited by me by referring to the Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka (DBP)'s grammar book, that is Tatabahasa Dewan Edisi Baharu. This loss of facts or information should be avoided in the future.

Master of Books (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:01, 16 November 2010 (UTC).

Indonesian and Malay are some centuries separated?

"Indonesian and Malay are separated by some centuries of different vocabulary development." The fact is, Indonesian version of Malay was developed early of 20th century. Indonesian as unifying language (as called in Youth's Oath 1928) is even not older than a century. Unless 100 years can be said as "some centuries", correction is needed here. Kembangraps (talk) 18:28, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Consider making a "real" language group article

I think similar to other language group article in wikipedia like Slavic Languages family, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_languages. This page does not describes Malay language as a group of language, but instead, more toward "Malaysia Language". Therefore things like grammar, etc should be put in special page about the language. After some searching in the wikipedia, I found an article which better described about the Malay as a language group which is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_languages even the link for Standard Malayan Malay is linked to this page while the Standard Indonesian Malay (formal) is linked to Indonesia language. (114.59.163.169 (talk) 14:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC))

Malaysian Malay and Indonesian is still mutually intelligible, which I doubt is the case with Slavic languages. Gombang (talk) 04:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Based on my knowledge they are mutually intelligible, if you have time you may want to check this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_in_official_languages_in_Serbia,_Croatia_and_Bosnia, which I think similar (not the same of course) to malay language case. The point is this article describe about Standard Malayan Malay (a language) while at the beginning it declares itself as "Malay refers to a group of languages closely related".

However in the process rather than focused on describing the difference between the group variety (which is linked as other article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Malay)). On the other hand, it describe (In full part) "Simple phrases in Malay" and "Colloquial and contemporary usage", which (especially the last one) clearly refer to the Standard Malayan Malay.

Therefore there is a problem since in the information box, its even says as "Official language in Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia (Indonesian language)[4], East Timor (Indonesian language as working language)" which may cause misconception of reader that "Standard Malayan Malay (instead of Malay as a language group) is officially used in Indonesia and East Timor", which is not.17:44, 3 September 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.163.0.56 (talk)

The article originally described the Malay language as a single language, not as family of languages, IIRC. Whether we can categorise Indonesian and Malaysian languages as a single language is disputable, of course. Gombang (talk) 03:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

This is quite interesting since we are talking about languages in evolution. One thing that people should remember is that in our time there are two standard Malay, that is Malaysian (English- & local dialects-influenced) and Indonesian (Dutch-, Javanese-, & Betawi-influenced). Brunei has their own standard, but it is not significant and basically based on Malaysian. People in Indonesia tend not to say Indonesian language as Malay because ethnicity in Indonesia is mostly perceived as based on language grouping. Linguistically, however, Indonesian is a Malay variety. Saying Indonesian is not Malay will make Malay language paraphyletic. Malay language (with all its varieties) is part of Malay languages. I agree that this article need a thorough review. Kembangraps (talk) 18:42, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Official in Indonesia (and Timor)?

I think the Malay is not the official language of Indonesia. As stated by official website of Indonesia government the official language of Indonesia is "Indonesian Language". On the other hand, the term "spoken in Indonesia", is clearly right, since Malay language spoken by Malay ethic in Borneo and Sumatra. Malay in Indonesia can be considered used as local dialect in some parts of Indonesia and not an official langauge. This is similar to Sunda Language, Jawa Language, etc which is spoken by its ethic member. (114.59.163.169 (talk) 14:56, 14 August 2009 (UTC))

Indonesian language IS a variant of Malay. Saying Indonesian is not Malay makes Malay language paraphyletic. Kembangraps (talk) 18:33, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Glottal Stops and Tonic Syllables

Hi everyone. I have decided to ask these questions in the hopes that someone - maybe a native speaker or a someone with more expertise on the subject - can add these clarifications to the "Phonology" section of the article, because it has been sometime since I am looking for these answers, and I am sure more beginning students of these languages have been having the same doubts as me:

1. I think I read somewhere that in Malay and Indonesian there is an "automatic" glottal stop before each word-initial vowel (even if this vowel is preceded by a word ending in a consonant), and between any vowels - with the exception of diphthongs, obviously. I did not gave this much thought though, until I realized that that was the way the words were being pronounced in the "Rosetta Stone - Indonesian" language learning software. So here is the question: In the "RS-I" software, are the words being pronounced like that just to make them more easily intelligible for beginners like myself, or are they really pronounced like that in everyday conversations? For instance, a simple sentence like

Apakah ada seorang pria di atas rumah itu?

Would be pronounced

[ʔa'pakah 'ʔada se'ʔorang 'pria di 'ʔatas 'rumah 'ʔitu]

Or, in normal (or maybe fast-paced) conversation,

[a'pakah'adase'orang'priadi'atas'rumah'itu]?

(' = Tonic Syllable)

2. In the same software ("Rosetta Stone - Indonesian"), the tonic syllables of some words seem to be the last one instead of the penultimate, even when the vowel in this syllable is not the schwa, and some words even seem to "change" their tonic syllable according to who is saying them. So here is the other question: Are the accentuation rules really just

"If the penultimate has a schwa, the last syllable is the tonic one; if the penultimate does not have a schwa, the penultimate is the tonic one;"

Or is this wrong?

Thank you very much, XVoX 23:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I think you asked very good questions. I'm a native speaker who's also doing linguistics, so I'll try to answer your questions.

Stress and tone are not contrastive in Malay and Indonesian. Therefore, if you're aiming for intelligible speech then you don't have to worry so much about this. Answering your question, the accentuation in the first example does seem a bit robotic if pronounced. I would say that in most cases the stress is penultimate, although as you pointed out there are some variations between different speakers (and this is because there's no fixed word-level stress)...There's a lot of debate in linguistics about the stress pattern in Indonesian, but if you are learning the language for practical purposes, then I think there's no need to get into that. Hope my answer helps.Syedhusni (talk) 06:00, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Javanese a Malay dialect?

"However, many Malay dialects are not as mutually intelligible: for example, Kelantanese pronunciation is difficult even for some Malaysians to understand, while Javanese tends to have a lot of words unique to it which will be unfamiliar to other speakers of Malay."

So Javanese is a dialect of Malay? Hayabusa future 02:16, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so. However it seems Malaysians also regard Kelantanese, Yawi, and Minangkabau of Negeri Sembilan as a dialect of Malay, so why not? :-p--Gombang 10:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Be mindful of WP:OR. __earth ^(Talk) 11:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it isn't. I've just fixed that.E.Cogoy 17:03, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of Malay dialects, Minangkabau language can be considered a Malay dialect because it uses many Malay words, although they were slight differences in pronunciation, e.g., itiak = itik, for "duck" & goriang = goreng, for "fry/fried". --121.218.215.16 (talk) 12:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

The hatnote

Please see Template talk:Distinguish#Incompatible wording for Distinguish2

For now I have changed the hatnote to

Not to be confused with the Malayalam language, spoken in India.

--83.253.36.136 15:16, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Classification and related languages

The last paragraph of this subsection notes,

Although each language of the family is mutually unintelligible, their similarities are rather striking.

However, I have it on good authority that Māori and Hawaiian, for example, are very much mutually intelligible. Perhaps this should be changed to read, although many languages of the family are mutually unintelligible?

75.35.227.117 06:47, 5 July 2007 (UTC) --~~~~Insert non-formatted text here

Hmmm... that's interesting. Maybe is should read thusly.

Joemaza 21:41, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Reduplication

I think the reduplication area needs some adjustments. Although "orang-orang" could mean "scarecrow", it could also be the plural of "orang", and the same goes with "hati". It is important to stress here that it is a case of lexical ambiguity instead of the semantics of the form changing altogether. Below I give you grammatical example sentences (with glossing and translation) containing the reduplicated words above:-

Saya suka membantu orang-orang cacat bila ada peluang.
I like me-help person.RED handicapped when exist chance
"I like to help handicapped people when there is a chance."

Hati-hati kami bukannya senang nak dilukakan.
liver/heart.RED our not.nya easy want di.wound.kan
"Our hearts are not easily wounded/broken."

Syedhusni (talk) 00:13, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. However the reduplication section probably needs further elaboration. A few examples might be good.

Especially since recently quite a number of terms in ICT and sciences have been created using partial reduplication such as papan kekunci (keyboard), tetikus (computer mouse),pepaku (spike) and something less recent jejari (radius)

--Danazach (talk) 22:43, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok I have changed it but I don't know how to include the examples you mentioned. Obviously we know that in those examples, reduplication is not a plural marker, therefore they probably have to go under another subtopic. Any ideas? Syedhusni (talk) 22:50, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

consonant phonemes

I don't think that "ts /θ/" and "dz /ð/" are phonemes in Malay, especially the voiced interdental fricative. I can't think of any Malay word that has this sound. As for "ts /θ/", I think it is written "th" instead of "ts". The only Malay word that I can think of that has this sound is "hadith", which is borrowed from Arabic, and even this word is sometimes written and pronounced with an "s". Syedhusni (talk) 00:27, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I also don't think that there is a minimal pair of a word with a trill "r" and a flapped "r" in Malay, therefore they are not phonemes. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think there's only the trill "r". Syedhusni (talk) 00:34, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Orthographic notes

I took out the note about 'x' representing /ks/, /z/ and /s/ because it is unnecessary. Another note, the one about "k" at the end of word being pronounced as a glottal stop should not be under orthography, it is a phonological phenomenon, just like the final vowel reduction - /a/ to schwa in some varieties128.175.180.149 (talk) 05:44, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

bahasa rojak

When reading the last section, previously titled "Usage among the younger generation", I noticed that it is making broad generalizations without any evidence. As a native Malaysian from Kuala Lumpur, I dont think only the youths use bahasa rojak ( I have changed this). Please refer Wong Khek Seng's 1987 thesis "Persilihan Bahasa di Kampung Kerinci", in which code-switching has been documented to have occurred in Kuala Lumpur even back then. I have changed the title for the time being, but I seriously think that section should be changed into a section on code-switching in Malay rather than "usage among the younger generation" or "colloquial usage". As for the slang words and the SMS abbreviations, I think they should go under a different sub-topic from the code switching part, because they are very different phenomena linguistically. Please give your opinions on this matter...I will let it sit for a week or two before making any changes.Thanks Syedhusni (talk) 18:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I have edited the section and excluded the "r" adding by youths when smsing, because it only happens in writing and the words are still not pronounced with the "r". SMS/text shorthand should be introduced in another page as it does not belong in the main page. For example, the page on the English language does not include any English sms/text language. I hope future editors would consider linguistic justifications before posting. Thanks Syedhusni (talk) 22:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Role of "youngsters"

Syed Husni wrote:

"I noticed that it is making broad generalizations without any evidence."

I have the same problem with some text under "Origin", viz.

"... while Indonesian contains many words unique to it that are unfamiliar to speakers of Malay (some because of Javanese (bahasa Jawa), Sundanese (bahasa Sunda) or other local language influence, and some because the language has been modified by youngsters)."

Although I have already cleaned up the grammar and pronunciation of this part, I have serious doubts about the final clause:

"some because the language has been modified by youngsters)."

I believe this to constitute nothing more than opinion, and have seen no evidence for it. Thus, after a short pause for reflection - say a week or so - I intend to remove that clause unless someone can offer support for it.

Another factor (for which evidence may exist) should perhaps be mentioned, and that is the fondness of official Indonesian for constructing new portmanteau words and abbreviations, e.g. "Kapolda", found in news reports, which I can only guess to be a contraction of "Ketua Polis Daerah". Again, we would need suitable sources (but I have none) before adding to the article.

yoyo (talk) 08:37, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Indonesian officials are fond of abbreviations. I think we can add that, although we should find some reliable source for it. By the way, your guess of the meaning of Kapolda is close, it is "Kepala Polisi Daerah" (which has basically the same meaning with your guess). Gombang (talk) 17:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't this article include Indonesian?

The article on the Indonesian language begins as follows: "Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a standardized dialect of the Malay language that was officially defined..." According to the Indonesian article, Indonesian is a form of Malay. According to this article, Malay is only similar to Indonesian. This article says that Indonesia adopted Malay as its official language but then goes on to refer to only the official register of it used in Malaysia (and Singapore & Brunei?). Shouldn't the wording of the introduction be changed, and the speaker statistics be changed to include Indonesian? And then shouldn't the point be made that the orthography being used in the article is Bahasa Malaysia, with a "main article" link to Indonesian?GSTQ (talk) 22:34, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, on closer inspection this article is riddled with inconsistencies. I'm going to fix them up so that Indonesian is included as another official register of the Malay language.GSTQ (talk) 00:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

GSTQ, I think you're right that this article should include Indonesian. However, if we should take this direction, we should assimilate the whole Indonesian article into this article. Considering that the term "Indonesian" is more of a political nomenclature rather than linguistic, the language should be included as a variation of Malay. The problem with this is "officially" these two languages are considered different, even in official language lists they are usually listed separately (Check out list of languages with native speakers). Therefore, I agree that some amendments should be made to get rid of the inconsistencies, but the article should remain as a separate one from Indonesian. As for the statistics, I agree with you, but wikipedia does not allow citing of own research, and on most linguistic literature they are listed as separate languages...so until you (or me, or anyone, for that matter) can find a citation which states otherwise, we should stick with this one. Thanks for raising this great pointSyedhusni (talk) 22:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Please check this out - http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=mly Syedhusni (talk) 22:45, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think merging the whole Indonesian article with this one is necessary, Indonesian as an established language standard deserves its own article. I don't understand your point about "original research". That Indonesian and Malay are the same language is a well-acknowledged fact, not original research. Here's one source of many: "Indonesian is a 20th century name for Malay... Malay is just one of many scores, perhaps hundreds, of different languages in the area now occupied by the Republic of Indonesia. In 1928 the Indonesian nationalist movement chose it as the future nation's national language. Its name was changed to Bahasa Indonesia..."[1]GSTQ (talk) 21:58, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

That article also said "Depending on how you define a language and how you count its number of speakers", indicating that it is subjective how you define a language. Spanish and Italian can be defined as the same language according to some school of linguistics, but that doesn't mean that they are. After reading the article, it is heavily Indonesia-centric, if you would allow that term. For example, it stated that " its name was changed to Bahasa Indonesia, literally: "the language (bahasa) of Indonesia", this is only true for Indonesia, however, in Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore, the language is Bahasa Melayu or Malay. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that this argument can go both ways and that Indonesian and Malay are the same language is a well-acknowledged CLAIM and not fact and a very debatable claim at that. Just google and search the question "are malay and indonesian the same language?" and I am sure you would see both sides of the coin. At present, some linguists define Indonesian and Malay as different languages (please refer ethnologue link above) and some linguists, including the writer of the article, define them as the same language. I would say that they are branches of the same language, but they have grown to be very distinct from each other, therefore I disagree that the number of native speakers of Malay should include the number of Indonesian speakers, with the exception of the speakers of Malay languages in central and southern Sumatra.

the first sentence in the article is very inaccurate:-

"Indonesian is a 20th century name for Malay"...

I am sure the whole Malay speaking population in Malaysia (myself included), Brunei, and Singapore will not agree with this. That sentence should be:-

"Indonesian is a 20th century name for Malay IN INDONESIA"

and this is because the Malay in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei is NOT Indonesian.Syedhusni (talk) 03:34, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I think this article[2] paints a better and more neutral picture of the linguistic situation in the region. Please take a look and tell me what you think. Syedhusni (talk) 04:04, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I think you missed the point of the quotation if you think that the absence of "in Indonesia" was important. The quotation does not purport to include the Malay of other countries. It says Indonesian is a 20th century name, not the 20th century name. The point of the quotation was that Indonesian is a variant of Malay, and that this is not original research. I am familiar with the debate about what constitutes a language. All I'm trying to resolve here is how this article, and indeed all of Wikipedia, deals with this situation, and frankly since both Indonesia and Malaysia's constitutions claim Malay as the national language of each it seems a pretty uncontroversial claim that they are the same language.GSTQ (talk) 04:57, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Ok I need to know what you mean by saying they're the same language. It seems more likely that Indonesian is a variant of Malay rather than them being the same language because it flows more smoothly with the general fact about both languages branching from the local malay language family (even then you have to put Indonesian lower in the language family tree Austronesian >Malayo-Polynesian>Malayic>Malayan>Local Malay>Malay>Indonesian instead of Local Malay branching out to Indonesian and Malay). However there is still a lot of linguistic controversy over this matter. I remember reading a perceptual linguistic research about how Singapore Malay, Malaysian Malay and Brunei Malay speakers understand less than 50% of Indonesian in its most standard form and how the 3 variants have a higher degree of mutual intelligibility and are more similar (I will see if I can find the online version of this article). Nevertheless, I agree that this article has some inconsistencies that has to be resolved. Currently, I think both the Malay and Indonesian articles are going by the ethnologue stats and that's why you get the dichotomy in the native speakers statistics. Personally I think this is the better way to go.

About the official language of Indonesia in the constitution (article 36))[3], the exact term they used was Bahasa Indonesia, and not Bahasa Melayu (nor was Indonesian defined as a variant/standardized dialect of Malay), and this is one of the reasons for Indonesian being considered a separate language from Malay. Therefore, I dont think it is an uncontroversial issue because politically they are different languages. And linguistically it is controversial because if we were to say they are the same language (or Indonesian as a variant of Malay), it requires a revision of the current version of the language family tree that I mentioned above.Syedhusni (talk) 09:38, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Going back to your first post, I think the word "dialect" in the statement " Indonesian is a standardized dialect of the Malay language" should first be changed to a more neutral term like "variant"...just my 2 cents' worthSyedhusni (talk) 09:49, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Anybody interested to learn about history and relation bahasa Indonesia & bahasa Melayu can visit here:- http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=ies Yosri (talk) 11:44, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

400 millions?

Where does the figure of 400 millions Malay speakers come from? Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Pattani and East Timor together only make some 265 millions inhabitants. Meursault2004 (talk) 01:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

400 millions? - Answer

I'm not really sure about this amount of speakers but I want to add: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Southern Thailand, Southern Phillippines.

I think It's about 300 Millions something... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.53.192.107 (talk) 12:34, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that will be less, since clearly, Indonesian people (except those who specialize study Malay language and Malay ethnic in Sumatra and Borneo) CAN'T speak it. Therefore can not be categorized a speaker. They (include me) may understand up to certain % of the meaning but when we reply, certainly we will speak Indonesian Language.

contradictory information on official name of the language in Malaysia

• the second paragraph says

In Malaysia, the language is now officially known as Bahasa Malaysia, ("Malaysian language"). Singapore, Brunei and southern Thailand refers to the language as Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language").

• the third paragraph contradicts this, saying:

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.

So which is it ? -endorf —Preceding unsigned comment added by Endorf (talk • contribs) 18:10, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Map

It'd be great if this page had a map showing usage of the Malay language and derivitives. Mathiastck (talk) 20:30, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Indonesian hatnote

I do not mean to express my opinion about the similarities and the differences between Malay and Indonesian, as i don't know either, but the hatnote that says "Not to be confused with the Indonesian language, a variety officially spoken in Indonesia." is not appropriate. The idea of "Not to be confused" hatnotes is to disambiguate between different meanings of similarly sounding words. "Malay" and "Malayalam" sound similar, but "Malay" and "Indonesian" are completely different.

Besides, the fact that Indonesian is closely related to Malay is mentioned in the opening paragraph.

I am removing that hatnote. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 11:31, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The reason for that is that Indonesian is also called 'Malay', or 'Indonesian Malay'. — kwami (talk) 17:28, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I understand that, but to the best of my understanding this hatnote is supposed to disambiguate article titles and not article subjects. If we don't have it for Dari/Persian and for Valencian/Catalan, then i understand that it shouldn't be here, too. Or is the situation here significantly different?

If someone is looking for information about Indonesian and gets here, then the first sentence will send him to the right place. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 19:52, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Different Dialects of the Malay Language.

There are lots of Malay Dialects spoken in South East Asian. This works like the Chinese or Indians that has lots of dialects where outsiders almost can't tell the differences. These different dialects can be detected if a researcher stayed and listen carefully on different speakers.

Much of the cause of these differences are the many Malay Kingdoms around South East Asia before that developing the language on their own ways. Some are not too different and some are totally hard to understand. Until today, there are still 10 official Malay Kingdom with Kings or Sultanates, that are the 9 Kings or Sultanates of Malaysia and One Sultan of Kingdom of Brunei. However, there are also unofficial Malay Kings such as in Southern Thailand, Southern Philippines, and some parts of the Indonesian Islands such as in the Sumatra. Other lost Malay Kingdoms are the Pattani of South Thailand, Temasik of Singapore, Sulu of South Philippines, Malacca of Central Malay Peninsula, Acheh of North Sumatra, Palembang of Middle Sumatra and many more. Much of the lost kingdoms are because of the Colonization age. In Malaysia alone, the Malay Language are varied according to different states (Kingdoms). There are the Northern Malay Dialects spoken by the State of Kedah, Penang, Perlis and Northern Perak. The Johore-Riau Dialects are spoken in Selangor, Johore, Malacca and Singaporean Malay. The Unique Dialects that spoken only in their own states are the Nogori Dialects Spoken by the State of Negeri Sembilan Natives, the Perakian Dialects spoken by the Perak Natives, The Terengganu Dialects spoken by the Terengganu natives, the Pahang Dialects spoken by the Pahang Natives, the Kelantanese Dialects spoken by the Kelantan Natives, Sarawakian Dialects spoken by the Sarawak Malays and the Sabahan Dialects spoken by the Sabah Malays. The Southern Thailand of Malay area in Pattani spoke much similar to the Kelantanese and the Southern Thailand of Malay area in Narathiwat spoke much the same with the Northern Malay Dialects (Kedah Perlis). The Southern Philippines of Malay Area (Mindanao and Sulu) can be understood by the Sabahan Malays and the Kadazans becaus it is quite close to their Dialects.

A very common Malay Dialects that being considered as Official Malay Language (Bahasa Melayu/Bahasa Malaysia) are the Johore-Riau Dialects. These Dialects has been officially used in the government sectors, Mass-media (Printed and Electronics) and schools. A very unique dialects and considered as hard to understand are the Kelantanese, the Terengganu, and the Sarawakian Dialects.

If you find out that there are lots of Malay Dialects in parts of Malaysia-Singapore, Southern Thailand, and Southern Philippines. These are not too much if to compare with the diversity of Dialects in Indonesia. That would be covered in the different topics. Snoiprocs16 (talk) 15:53, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

merge

IMO grammar at Malaysian and Indonesian should be merged here, to avoid a content fork. The two standards differ primarily in vocab, but there's very little diff otherwise. We could leave a summary, but currently we have a lot of detail. I tagged the sections at Indo that IMO should be here; at Malaysian, it's primarily phonology that's dup'd, tho I'm guessing we'd want to leave at least a basic chart, as at Indo.

Titles are good, though we might want to consider 'Malaysian Malay' and 'Indonesian Malay' to clarify that these aren't languages any more than American English and British English are. Only prob w that is that 'Indonesian Malay' might be construed as native Malay spoken in Riau and Sumatra, which is called Bahasa Malayu rather than Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesia. — kwami (talk) 08:06, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

My apologies – I’m not completely sure what you are suggesting. It seems you are not suggesting a merge of pages, but merge/rearrangement of content across pages. Am I right? In which case I'm am largely supportive of your recommendations - although American and British English underestimates the differences.

The Indonesia project editors should be consulted on these issues, and I have not got their views yet, but my thoughts related to broader issues on these articles are:

• Malay language, Indonesian language, Malaysian are all related but distinct enough subjects for their own pages. Perhaps the “Malaysian” title needs reassessment.
• I certainly support a re-organisation of content between these. While a degree of overlap is inherently necessary, at the moment overlap IMO is excessive and confused. But, with the creation of the “Malaysian” article, we are now on the right track.
• If the Malay article is to continue to promote Indonesian as being Malay (which I think is at best careless – at worst disingenuous), then what I’m calling the “Malaysianness” needs to be correspondingly toned down. 20m vs. 200m is simple maths.
• Indonesian language should not be moved to Indonesian Malay. I don’t get that. I have never heard to it referred to it as such. It is overwhelmingly (ie, always) referred to as Indonesian across the world. Actually, there is one place I have seen it referred to as such: here on wikipedia. But it was unreferenced and likely WP:OR efforts that, if I may be cynical and cheeky for one brief moment, I suspect may have been written by a Malaysian. ;-)
• British English vs. American English comparisons are probably not that helpful. The differences between Malaysian and Indonesian varieties are much more pronounced – and they are generally referred to as distinct languages. There would be differences in almost every sentence in a comparison, rather than the occasional "garbage"-"trash" and "petrol"-"gas" differences.
• Given that “Malay” was always a/the lingua franca throughout Maritime Southeast Asia and that Indonesian is based on a variety that had its origins in Indonesia not Malaysia, I think lines like (and I'm paraphrasing ehre) “Malay is the official language in Malaysia and also Indonesia as Indonesian” is a little careless, and at worst, disingenuous.
• I’m concerned that the articles are increasingly becoming grammar and vocab guides. An encyclopedia should focus on general descriptions of the language including its history/development and where and where it is used and varieties. Not on how to use it. Wikipedia language articles are not “how to” guides. If the grammar content is merged into Malay language, then that article needs to be less Malaysia-centric with Indonesian as an after thought. Ie, the new Malaysian language needs to be kept. But, even better, would be to remove most of the text book stuff.
• We’ve mentioned the varieties of Indonesia and Malaysia. What about Brunei? Is it “Malaysian”?
• East Timor uses Indonesian (after Portuguese, Tetum of course). It does not use Malay/sian.

Cheers --Merbabu (talk) 00:14, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Malaysian and Indonesian are the same language. They're even based on the same dialect of Malay: that of the Johore-Riau court, a sultanate which was divided between Malaysia and Indonesia. In the ELL2, they are treated under a single title, "Malay"; the article on Indonesia states that the national language is Malay, which was renamed Indonesian as part of the national independence movement. They are only separate languages in the sense that they are separate national standards, but the differences are almost entirely in the vocabulary, and then not in the basic vocab. I'm sure you know the situation better than I, but when I'm in Indonesia, people say I speak Indonesian, and when I'm in Malaysia, people say I speak Malaysian, yet I speak the same language in both countries: I only make a few minor changes to grammatical words, such as tak.

I agree 'Malay' should be balanced and not cover Malaysian. The reason that it does that until recently it was the article for Malaysian. The way I see it, 'Malay language' should cover the language as a whole, with only summaries of the Malaysian and Indonesian standards. 'Malaysian language' and 'Indonesian language' should cover the standards in detail, with only summaries of the material in the main article.

Brunei has always gone by the name "Malay", but I don't know if it's a separate standard. The colloquial language is clearly a distinct dialect, though, as are all of the 'local Malays'.

East Timor of course also uses Malay through the Indonesian standard.

A couple cites from ELL2:

"On the Malay Peninsula and on the adjacent southern islands, Malay developed literary varieties at the various royal courts. The most prestigious one was the literary classical Malay of the Riau-Johore kingdom, which had its roots in the literary tradition of the earlier sultanate of Malacca. ... The existence of two standard varieties of Malay, namely Malaysian (called ‘Bahasa Melayu’ in Malaysia) and Indonesian (‘Bahasa Indonesia’), is mainly the result of an agreement reached between the British and the Dutch, who in 1824 drew new boundaries of their colonial territories. The mainland part of the Malay-speaking area became part of the British realm, and Sumatra together with the offshore islands became part of the Dutch realm. The treaty divided the former Riau-Johore Sultanate into two separate entities, with Johore belonging to the British and the Riau archipelago belonging to the Dutch. Because of this political demarcation, the influential Riau-Johore variant of Malay was now spoken in two distinct territories, which were to become Malaysia and Indonesia. Since this prestigious Riau-Johore court language played a major role in the formation of the standard languages of both countries, Malaysian and Indonesian remained closely related and are dialects of one and the same language. The differences between the two are most obvious in the vocabulary. The phonological, morphological, and syntactic differences are few and not very significant. There are a considerable number of cases in which Malaysian borrowed an English word and Indonesian a Dutch word, e.g., tayar vs. ban ‘tire’ or fius vs. sekering ‘fuse.’ Other variations occur when one of the two national variants has borrowed a European word, while the other one is a retention or an innovation, e.g., Malaysian dulang ‘tray’ (retention) vs. Indonesian baki ‘tray’ (from Dutch bakje) or Malaysian panggung wayang ‘cinema’ (innovation) vs. Indonesian bioskop (from Dutch bioscoop). There are cases when both Malaysian and Indonesian share the some word but with minor phonetic variation, e.g., Malaysian kerusi, Indonesian kursi ‘chair’ (from Arabic kursī). In some instances the Malay word underwent different semantic changes, e.g., Malaysian pusing ‘turn, revolve’ has the meaning ‘dizzy’ in Indonesian. Furthermore, Malaysian has borrowed more from Arabic than Indonesian, while Indonesian has undergone considerable Javanese and Jakarta Malay influence. In Indonesia, the establishment of Malay as the national language was not disputed; its choice was not regarded as favoring any one ethnic group, since ethnic Malays constituted no more than 10% of Indonesia’s population. Furthermore, various forms of Malay had long been established throughout the Indonesian archipelago." ("Malay", pp. 6232-6233)

"During the time of Dutch colonial control (until 1942), the official language was Dutch but, because Malay was more widely known, it became increasingly important both as an administrative language and as a medium of instruction in schools. Riau Malay, the dialect spoken in central Sumatra near Singapore, became the standard. In the early part of the 20th century, Malay became associated with the nationalist movement for independence. In 1928 young nationalists declared Bahasa Indonesia, their new name for Malay, to be the national language. Their aspirations were not fully realized until independence came in 1945, and Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) was decreed to be the national language." ("Indonesia: Language situation", pp. 4545-4546)

There is no separate article for "Indonesian" or "Malaysian". — kwami (talk) 01:08, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Same language or not, I was distracted by your suggestion that the two were no different than British and American English. Fortuantely none of the WP articles appear to suggest that. The excerpt you provide above is encouragingly more in line of what I think wikipedia language articles should cover - rather than the "Language X for beginners" guides that the Indonesian language article is increasingly becoming.

Yes, such info belongs at Wikibooks. You can start gutting the article of all the 'how-to' stuff if you like. I don't think anyone would mind. — kwami (talk) 01:29, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

And yeah - I haven't really looked in detail at the articles, but a combination of removal and your initial suggestion for merging to Malay Language for the technical details seems sound in principal. cheers --Merbabu (talk) 01:34, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I somehow agree with Kwamikagami in the sense that this whole wikipedia article needs to be revamped and provide a more neutral content. Both Indonesian and Malysian Malay are based on the same lineage, hence the article on Malay should focus more on the common history - i.e. Old Malay, Classical Malay before it diverges into two different Malay used officially in three different countries in the middle 20th century. Once it comes to the point of divergence, a brief info of each standards (regulated by the language council of each country) is provided and should be linked to each article that touches more detail of each standards. --Danazach (talk) 12:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

In the French WP I found an article "Grammaire du malais-indonésien", but also an article "Indonésien". Although a newcomer in WP, I took the initiative of transferring the most "linguistic-style" paragraphs from the first article to the second, without encountering any criticism. I agree that the differences between Indonesian and Malay are tiny, but the person who does not know anything on Indonesian will not likely start their browsing with "Malay". Therefore I also think that some basic introductory article on Indonesian should remain besides a fully detailed Grammar of Malay and Indonesian (or Grammar of Indonesian and Malay!). Acsacal (talk) 14:15, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I am of the opinion that Malay should be a generic term (all encompassing covering Indonesia, Malaysian, Brunei, Singaporean, Sarawakian, Kelantanese, Southern Thai etc). This article used Malay that is connotatively biased towards Malay used in Malaysia, because the term Malay tend to be officially linked to the official language of the government of Malaysia, in comparison to the, pardon my language, politically-connived term Indonesian. (Compare it with Brunei which also uses the term Malay).

Had Indonesian uses the term 'Malay' to call their dialect, there's no doubt that this article will have more of Indonesian content. --Danazach (talk) 12:24, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree completely with the approach you outlined above. I also agree that the Malaysian details of this article need to be moved to Malaysian language. (That's cleanup remaining from the recent split.) As for the Malaysian connotations of the word "Malay", that's why we have separate articles. Someone looking up "Indonesian" will be directed here as the main article.

Either that, or we could merge all three articles into one, parallel the Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, and start w s.t. like "Malay, also known as Malaysian in Malaysia and Indonesian in Indonesia, is a ...". — kwami (talk) 20:31, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Merge more or less done, and I expanded a bit, though this article needs a lot of work! — kwami (talk) 13:11, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Origins of the Word and Uasage of Malay/Malayu

I would like to propose the following

The Etymology of Malay or Malayu goes back to the 7th century and is derived from what the Kshatriya ruling class of the Srivijaya Kingdom (the bunts and the Nairs), who were from South West region of India speaking Malayalam a Dravidian dialect named from Ancient times from Malaya Mountains where it originated. This is evidenced by the Balinese Kshatriya's who claim ancestral origin from south west India Kshatriya casts. Some historian promote that the word Melayu derives from the Sanskrit] term Malaiur translated as "land of mountains" which is erroneous since Sanskrit nor any other Prakrit has a similar word in context. During the time of the first unified Kingdom of the region the local people must have identified with the rulers and started to refer themselves as such, So when the European colonist first arrived the must have proclaimed themselves 'Malayu' or any such other similar variant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NoeticOne (talk • contribs) 08:13, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any reliable sources per WP:V? thanks --Merbabu (talk) 09:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Infobox standard languages noted

Should we include the as Indonesian, as Malaysian, and possible others such as as Bruneian in the infobox after each country such as the IP just added to East Timor? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 06:15, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Does the term "Malaysian language" even exist in English?

Can somebody give a reference to the term Malaysian language being the official English translation of the Malay term Bahasa Malaysia? The English translation in Malaysian English has always been, simply, Malay language. As in most things in Malaysia, the English term Malay refers to Malay ethnicity and native language, while Malaysian refers to nationality of all races, or in the context of the whole nation.

Malaysian language, to my best knowledge, can only be referred as an improper noun, as in Kadazan is a Malaysian language. Bahasa Indonesia is officially translated as Indonesian, but Bahasa Malaysia is still Malay language in Standard Malaysian, Singaporean, and Bruneian English. While I understand the need to separate between the general Malay language (in reference to the lingua franca of the region) and Bahasa Malaysia, I do not agree with the term Malaysian language without citing references.

To highlight my point further, see how ridiculous this sentence sounds: Malaysian is the official language of Brunei, and one of the four official languages of Singapore. The English version of the constitution of all these three Commonwealth countries clearly used the term Malay language, and not Malaysian language - even in Malaysia.

--Anggerik (talk) 21:03, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

So, if you understand the distinction between Malay and Malaysian (and thus presumably the justification for two articles) how do you propose to distinguish them? This discussion may be of assistance. Also, in my opinion, slapping on a dispute tag at the top of the article straight away, is not the most constructive thing to do. Remember, wikipedia is "live" and it's primarily for readers. It's not a draft waiting for issue. How do you know your so called "dispute" is not quickly resolved to everyone's liking? Such a banner should be a last resort. --Merbabu (talk) 21:21, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The dialect has been called Bahasa Malaysian by politicians in Malaysia for the past few year, "Malaysian language" is just the english translation. That sentence doesn't sound ridiculous anyway, it's like saying that "German is the official language of Austria", which is perfectly true. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 01:12, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I perfectly agree with the current arrangement with three distinct articles on Malay language in general, and Malaysian and Indonesian variants. The article for the Malaysian variant should be renamed to Bahasa Malaysia or Malay language (Malaysia). I have never encountered the term Bahasa Malaysian or Malaysian language in official usage to refer to the language, and could not find any reference to them online. In Malaysian English, the language is both referred to either Bahasa Malaysia[4] or Malay language[5] (based on references from Malaysian National News Agency (Bernama), the former is seven times more common). Malaysian cannot be compared with the term German, but Malay can. The term Malaysian only exists after 1963 following the formation of Malaysia: Singapore was part of it for a brief two-year period, while Brunei and Southern Thailand never were. Malay language is native to Singapore, Brunei and southern Thailand, as much as it is to Malaysia - referring the language of these countries as Malaysian language is absurd. The article for Bahasa Malaysia should cover only Malaysia, while Singapore, Brunei and Southern Thailand sections should remain only under the general Malay language article. Bahasa Malaysia (or the wrongly translated Malaysian language) is a political term that refers to the official language of Malaysia, and the standard variant of Malay language in Malaysia as regulated by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Although Bahasa Malaysia literally translates to Malaysian language, this does not make it correct, since the official term in English already exists. It is even more incorrect when its usage is extended to Malay-speaking areas outside the borders of Malaysia.--Anggerik (talk) 10:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)