Talk:Malay language

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))

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))

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)

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)