How many people speak the Malay language?
Malay is spoken as a first language by about 80 million people, and as a first or second language by close to 300 million. It is native to the islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula.
Questions about Malay language
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Which countries use Malay as an official language?
Malay is an official language of Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, where the standardised variety is known as Indonesian. Indonesian is also one of the working languages of Timor-Leste.
What is the oldest inscription in the Malay language?
The Kedukan Bukit inscription is the earliest known stone inscription in Old Malay, dated the 1st of May 683. It was found on the island of Sumatra, written in the Pallava variety of the Grantha alphabet, and discovered by the Dutchman C. J. Batenburg on the 29th of November 1920.
Why is Indonesian different from Malaysian Malay?
Indonesian leans toward Sanskrit when forming new words, while Malaysian and Bruneian Malay prefer Arabic. Their administrative, business, and legal terms came from different colonial masters, Dutch for Indonesian and English for Malaysian Malay, producing a divergence the source describes as systemic.
What scripts has the Malay language been written in?
Malay has been written in the Pallava, Kawi, and Rencong scripts, then in the Arabic-derived Jawi script, and today mainly in the Latin script known as Rumi. Jawi gradually replaced the older scripts through the Malacca Sultanate era, and from the 17th century the Latin script gradually replaced Jawi.
Where did the Malay language originate?
Malay historical linguists agree the Malayic homeland most likely lay in western Borneo. A form known as Proto-Malayic was spoken in Borneo at least by 1000 BCE and has been argued to be the ancestral language of all subsequent Malayic languages.