Malay

Where it’s spoken

Malay is the national language of Malaysia (called Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia), Brunei, and one of four official languages of Singapore (where it has symbolic state status). Indonesia’s Bahasa Indonesia is essentially a standardized form of the same language. Together, Malay and Indonesian have nearly 290 million speakers across maritime Southeast Asia.

What it sounds like

Malay phonology is similar to Indonesian’s, with six vowels and a clean consonant inventory. It is non-tonal. Word formation uses extensive prefixation and circumfixation — for instance, the prefix me- and circumfix me-…-kan derive verbs. Reduplication is common to mark plurals or intensity.

How it’s written

Modern Malay uses the Latin alphabet (Rumi). It has also been written in Jawi, a modified Arabic script that was the predominant Malay writing system from the 14th to 19th centuries and survives in religious and ceremonial contexts in Brunei and parts of Malaysia.

History

Malay was the trade lingua franca of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea from at least the 7th-century Srivijaya Empire onward. The 1972 spelling reform harmonized Malay and Indonesian orthography after centuries of colonial divergence.