Bahasa Malaysia

The Malay language (ISO 639-1 code: MS)(Malay: Bahasa Melayu), is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people who reside in the Malay Peninsula, southern Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau islands, parts of the coast of Borneo and even in the Netherlands.

Malay is an official language of Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, and East Timor. In Indonesia and East Timor, the language is formally referred to as Bahasa Indonesia, which literally translates as “Indonesian language.” It is also called Bahasa Kebangsaan (National Language) and Bahasa Persatuan/Pemersatu (Unifying Language) in Indonesia.

In Malaysia, the language was once officially known as Bahasa Malaysia, (”Malaysian language”.) The term, 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.

Indonesia announced Malay as its official language when it gained independence, calling it Bahasa Indonesia. However, the language had been used by the Dutch to unite the people of the Indonesian archipelagos during their presence there. Since 1928, nationalists and young people throughout the Indonesian archipelagos have declared it to be Indonesia’s only official language, as proclaimed in the Sumpah Pemuda “Youth Vow.”

Indonesian and Malay are, to a large degree, mutually intelligible, however, Indonesian is distinct from Malay as spoken in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, where the language is known simply as Bahasa Melayu. ‘Bahasa Melayu’ is defined as Brunei’s official language in the country’s 1959 Constitution.

However, many Malay dialects are not as mutually intelligible: for example, Kelantanese pronunciation is difficult even for some Malaysians to understand, while Indonesian has a lot of words unique to it that are unfamiliar to other speakers of Malay who are not from Indonesia.

The language spoken by the Peranakan (Straits Chinese, a hybrid of Chinese settlers from the Ming Dynasty and local Malays) is a unique patois of Malay and the Chinese dialect of Hokkien, which is mostly spoken in the former Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca.