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76-594: Malayness ( Malay : Kemelayuan , Jawi : كملايوان ‎) is the state of being Malay or of embodying Malay characteristics. This may include that which binds and distinguishes the Malay people and forms the basis of their unity and identity. People who call themselves Malay are found in many countries in Southeast Asia , united by a notional shared identity but divided by political boundaries, divergent histories, variant dialects and peculiarities of local experience. While

152-508: A Republic of Greater Indonesia for a Pan-Malay identity . The version of Malayness brought by this group was largely modelled on the anthropological concept of Malay race , that transcend the religious boundary and with the absence of the role of monarchy. Another attempt to redefine the Malayness was made by a coalition of left wing political parties, the AMCJA , that proposed the term 'Melayu' as

228-548: A demonym or citizenship for an independent Malaya. In the wake of the armed rebellion launched by the Malayan Communist Party , the activities of most left wing organizations came to a halt following the declaration of Malayan Emergency in 1948 that witnessed a major clampdown by the British colonial government. This development left those of moderate and traditionalist faction, with an opportunity to gain their ground in

304-417: A 'Malay nation' focussed on questions of identity and distinction in terms of customs, religion, and language, rather than politics. The debate surrounding the transition centred on the question of who could be called the real Malay, and the friction led to the emergence of various factions amongst Malay nationalists. The leftists from Kesatuan Melayu Muda were among the earliest who appeared with an ideal of

380-471: A commercial diaspora retaining the customs, language and trade practices of Melaka. In his 16th century Malay word-list, Antonio Pigafetta made a reference to how the phrase chiara Malaiu ('Malay ways') was used in the Maritime Southeast Asia, to refer to the al parlare de Malaea ( Italian for 'to speak of Melaka'). Kingship, and its polity ( kerajaan ), was a prominent pillar of Malayness in

456-416: A compound word related to origin or usage. A polito-ethnonym indicates that name originated from the political affiliation, like when the polysemic term Austrians is sometimes used more specifically for native, German speaking inhabitants of Austria , who have their own endonyms. A topo-ethnonym refers to the ethnonym derived from a toponym (name of a geographical locality, placename), like when

532-596: A descendant of the Proto-Austronesian language , began to break up by at least 2000 BCE, possibly as a result of the southward expansion of Austronesian peoples into Maritime Southeast Asia from the island of Taiwan . The history of the Malay language can be divided into five periods: Old Malay, the Transitional Period, the Classical Malay, Late Modern Malay and Modern Malay. Old Malay is believed to be

608-502: A greater evolution; older terms such as colored carried negative connotations and have been replaced by modern-day equivalents such as Black or African American . Other ethnonyms such as Negro have a different status. The term was considered acceptable in its use by activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, but other activists took a different perspective. In discussing an address in 1960 by Elijah Muhammad , it

684-518: A lingua franca derived from Classical Malay as well as Makassar Malay , which appears to be a mixed language . Malay historical linguists agree on the likelihood of the Malayic homeland being in western Borneo . A form known as Proto-Malayic was spoken in Borneo at least by 1000 BCE, it has been argued to be the ancestral language of all subsequent Malayic languages . Its ancestor, Proto-Malayo-Polynesian ,

760-555: A mid vowel [e, o] . Orthographic note : both /e/ and /ə/ are written with ⟨e⟩ . Orthographic /e, o/ are relatively rare, so the letter ⟨e⟩ usually represents /ə/ . There are some homographs; for example, perang is used for both /pəraŋ/ "war" and /peraŋ ~ piraŋ/ "blond". (In Indonesia, "blond" may be written perang or pirang .) Some analyses regard /ai, au, oi/ as diphthongs. However, [ai] and [au] can only occur in open syllables, such as cukai ("tax") and pulau ("island"). Words with

836-434: A phonetic diphthong in a closed syllable, such as baik ("good") and laut ("sea"), are actually two syllables. An alternative analysis therefore treats the phonetic diphthongs [ai] , [au] and [oi] as a sequence of a monophthong plus an approximant: /aj/ , /aw/ and /oj/ respectively. There is a rule of vowel harmony : the non-open vowels /i, e, u, o/ in bisyllabic words must agree in height, so hidung ("nose")

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912-562: A romanticized Malayness has been an integral component of Malay nationalism , succeeded in ending the British rule in Malaya. Today, the most commonly accepted pillars of Malayness; the Malay rulers , Malay language and culture, and Islam , are institutionalized in both Malay majority countries, Brunei and Malaysia . As a still fully functioning Malay sultanate, Brunei proclaimed Malay Islamic Monarchy as its national philosophy. In Malaysia, where

988-431: A root word ( affixation ), formation of a compound word (composition), or repetition of words or portions of words ( reduplication ). Nouns and verbs may be basic roots, but frequently they are derived from other words by means of prefixes , suffixes and circumfixes . Malay does not make use of grammatical gender , and there are only a few words that use natural gender; the same word is used for 'he' and 'she' which

1064-522: A subgroup within the larger Malay community, similarly in the 19th century Riau , powerful migrant Bugis elites within the Malay heartland, diplomatically negotiated and legitimized their positions, thus gaining the needed identity as Malay. Other instances can also be observed in North Sumatra and Borneo , where tribal communities, in particular the Batak and Dayak peoples , being systematically drawn into

1140-402: Is dia or for 'his' and 'her' which is dia punya . There is no grammatical plural in Malay either; thus orang may mean either 'person' or 'people'. Verbs are not inflected for person or number, and they are not marked for tense; tense is instead denoted by time adverbs (such as 'yesterday') or by other tense indicators, such as sudah 'already' and belum 'not yet'. On the other hand, there

1216-456: Is a complex system of verb affixes to render nuances of meaning and to denote voice or intentional and accidental moods . Malay does not have a grammatical subject in the sense that English does. In intransitive clauses, the noun comes before the verb. When there is both an agent and an object , these are separated by the verb (OVA or AVO), with the difference encoded in the voice of the verb. OVA, commonly but inaccurately called "passive",

1292-430: Is allowed but * hedung is not. Pronunciation Pronunciation Pronunciation Study by Uri Tadmor which was published in 2003 shows that mutation of ⟨a⟩ in final open syllable is an areal feature. Specifically, it is an areal feature of Western Austronesia. Uri Tadmor classify those types into four groups as below. Malay is an agglutinative language , and new words are formed by three methods: attaching affixes onto

1368-557: Is an Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei , Indonesia , Malaysia , and Singapore . It is also spoken in East Timor and parts of Thailand . Altogether, it is spoken by 290 million people (around 260 million in Indonesia alone in its own literary standard named " Indonesian ") across Maritime Southeast Asia . The language is pluricentric and a macrolanguage , i.e., several varieties of it are standardized as

1444-617: Is called ethnonymy or ethnonymics. Ethnonyms should not be confused with demonyms , which designate all the people of a geographic territory, regardless of ethnic or linguistic divisions within its population. Numerous ethnonyms can apply to the same ethnic or racial group, with various levels of recognition, acceptance and use. The State Library of South Australia contemplated this issue when considering Library of Congress headings for literature pertaining to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people . Some 20 different ethnonyms were considered as potential Library of Congress headings, but it

1520-406: Is designated the bahasa persatuan/pemersatu ("unifying language" or lingua franca ) whereas the term "Malay" ( bahasa Melayu ) is domestically restricted to vernacular varieties of Malay indigenous to areas of Central to Southern Sumatra and West Kalimantan . Classical Malay , also called Court Malay, was the literary standard of the pre-colonial Malacca and Johor Sultanates and so

1596-477: Is divided into Bornean and Sumatran Malay; some of the most widely spoken Sumatran Malay dialects are Riau Malay , Langkat , Palembang Malay and Jambi Malay . Minangkabau , Kerinci and Bengkulu are believed to be Sumatran Malay descendants. Meanwhile, the Jakarta dialect (known as Betawi ) also belongs to the western Malay group. The eastern varieties, classified either as dialects or creoles , are spoken in

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1672-623: Is not a tonal language . The consonants of Malaysian and also Indonesian are shown below. Non-native consonants that only occur in borrowed words, principally from Arabic, Dutch and English, are shown in brackets. Orthographic note : The sounds are represented orthographically by their symbols as above, except: Loans from Arabic : Malay originally had four vowels, but in many dialects today, including Standard Malay, it has six, with /i/ split into /i, e/ and /u/ split into /u, o/ . Many words are commonly pronounced variably, with either [i, u] or [e, o] , and relatively few words require

1748-554: Is not readily intelligible with the standard language , and the same is true with some lects on the Malay Peninsula such as Kedah Malay . However, both Brunei and Kedah are quite close. Malay is now written using the Latin script , known as Rumi in Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore or Latin in Indonesia, although an Arabic script called Arab Melayu or Jawi also exists. Latin script

1824-642: Is official in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Malay uses Hindu-Arabic numerals . Rumi (Latin) and Jawi are co-official in Brunei only. Names of institutions and organisations have to use Jawi and Rumi (Latin) scripts. Jawi is used fully in schools, especially the religious school, sekolah agama , which is compulsory during the afternoon for Muslim students aged from around 6–7 up to 12–14. Efforts are currently being undertaken to preserve Jawi in Malaysia, and students taking Malay language examinations in Malaysia have

1900-515: Is similar to Kelantanese Malay, but the language has no official status or recognition. Owing to earlier contact with the Philippines , Malay words—such as dalam hati (sympathy), luwalhati (glory), tengah hari (midday), sedap (delicious)—have evolved and been integrated into Tagalog and other Philippine languages . By contrast, Indonesian has successfully become the lingua franca for its disparate islands and ethnic groups, in part because

1976-500: Is the Germans. The ethnonym Germans is a Latin -derived exonym used in the English language, but the Germans call themselves Deutsche , an endonym. The German people are identified by a variety of exonyms across Europe, such as Allemands ( French ), tedeschi ( Italian ), tyskar ( Swedish ) and Niemcy ( Polish ). As a sub-field of anthroponymy , the study of ethnonyms

2052-619: Is the basic and most common word order. The Malay language has many words borrowed from Arabic (in particular religious terms), Sanskrit , Tamil , certain Sinitic languages , Persian (due to historical status of Malay Archipelago as a trading hub), and more recently, Portuguese , Dutch and English (in particular many scientific and technological terms). There is a group of closely related languages spoken by Malays and related peoples across Brunei , Indonesia , Malaysia , Singapore , Southern Thailand , Kampung Alor in East Timor , and

2128-517: Is the lack of possessive pronouns (and suffixes) in eastern dialects. Manado uses the verb pe and Ambon pu (from Malay punya 'to have') to mark possession. So 'my name' and 'our house" are translated in western Malay as namaku and rumah kita but kita pe nama and torang pe rumah in Manado and beta pu nama , katong pu rumah in Ambon dialect. The pronunciation may vary in western dialects, especially

2204-608: The Cham alphabet are used by the Chams of Vietnam and Cambodia . Old Malay was written using Pallava and Kawi script, as evident from several inscription stones in the Malay region. Starting from the era of kingdom of Pasai and throughout the golden age of the Malacca Sultanate, Jawi gradually replaced these scripts as the most commonly used script in the Malay region. Starting from the 17th century, under Dutch and British influence, Jawi

2280-511: The polysemic term Montenegrins , which was originally used for the inhabitants of the geographical area of the Black Mountain ( Montenegro ), acquired an additional ethnonymic use, designating modern ethnic Montenegrins , who have their own distinct endonyms. Classical geographers frequently used topo-ethnonyms (ethnonyms formed from toponyms) as substitute for ethnonyms in general descriptions, or for unknown endonyms. Compound terminology

2356-560: The 13th century Padang Roco Inscription , Ma-li-yu-er in the 13th century's Yuan chronicle , Malauir in the 13th century's Marco Polo 's account , and Malayapura in the 14th century's Amoghapasa inscription . Despite its ancient origin, the term 'Melayu' did not establish itself as an ethnonym at least until the advent of the Melaka Sultanate in the 15th century. Islamisation developed an ethnoreligious identity in Melaka, with

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2432-425: The 15th century. After the fall of Melaka in 1511 , the notion of Malayness developed in two ways: to claim lines of kingship or acknowledge descent from Srivijaya and Melaka , and to refer to a pluralistic commercial diaspora around the peripheries of the Malay world that retained the Malay language, customs and trade practices of the Melaka emporium. By the mid 20th century, an anti-Western colonialism concept of

2508-495: The Advancement of Colored People. In such contexts, ethnonyms are susceptible to the phenomenon of the euphemism treadmill . In English, ethnonyms are generally formulated through suffixation; most ethnonyms for toponyms ending in -a are formed by adding -n : Bulgaria, Bulgarian ; Estonia, Estonian . In English, in many cases, the name for the dominant language of a group is identical to their English-language ethnonym;

2584-511: The British to accept an alternative federalist order known as the Federation of Malaya , the Malay translation of which was Persekutuan Tanah Melayu (literally 'Federation of Malay Land'). The federation would later be reconstituted as Malaysia in 1963. In modern times, the traditional Malay notion of fealty to a ruler, charged to protect Islam in his territory, is central in both Malaysia and Brunei. In Brunei, this has been institutionalized under

2660-549: The French speak French, the Germans speak German. This is sometimes erroneously overgeneralized; it may be assumed that people from India speak "Indian", despite there being no language in India which is called by that name. Generally, any group of people may have numerous ethnonyms, associated with the political affiliation with a state or a province, with geographical landmark, with the language, or another distinct feature. Ethnonym may be

2736-687: The Islamic era, in a sense which appears to apply as an old toponym to the Strait of Melaka region in general. Among the notable occurrences are Malayadvipa in Vayu Purana , Maleu-Kolon in the 2nd century Ptolemy's Geographia (on the west coast of Golden Chersonese ), Mo-Lo-Yu in the 7th century Yijing 's account, Malaiur in the 11th century's inscriptions in Brihadeeswarar Temple , Malai in 12th century Idrisi 's Tabula Rogeriana , Malayu in

2812-516: The Malay sultanates. In British Malaya , the principle of 'plural society' underscored the social order of the modern colonial and post-colonial periods. From the 17th–19th centuries, the colonial administrators—first the Dutch, followed by the British—redefined the meaning of 'Malay' and 'Malayness', setting boundaries legitimized by rules of law and policies, thus elevating it to a 'nation'. After

2888-404: The Malay world of Southeast Asia, and was one of the oldest testimonies to the advent of Islam as a state religion in the region. It contains the proclamation issued by a ruler of Terengganu known as Seri Paduka Tuan, urging his subjects to extend and uphold Islam and providing 10 basic Sharia laws for their guidance. The classical Malay language came into widespread use as the lingua franca of

2964-577: The Malay-speaking trading network. The Portuguese , Spanish and Dutch used the labels 'Malay' and 'Malayness' in this way. The subjective aspect of Malay and Malayness allowed a distinct plurality in the composition of the category 'Malay', since it was open to new recruits from any background, both within and outside the Malay World. In the 18th century, the people of Siak in eastern Sumatra , through violence and literary text, succeeded in becoming

3040-1043: The Malayic languages spoken by the Orang Asli ( Proto-Malay ) in Malaya . They are Jakun , Orang Kanaq , Orang Seletar , and Temuan . The other Malayic languages, included in neither of these groups, are associated with the expansion of the Malays across the archipelago. They include Riau-Johor Malay ( Malaysian and Indonesian ), Kedah Malay , Kedayan/Brunei Malay , Berau Malay , Bangka Malay , Jambi Malay , Kutai Malay , Natuna Malay, Riau Malay , Loncong , Pattani Malay , and Banjarese . Menterap may belong here. There are also several Malay-based creole languages , such as Betawi , Cocos Malay , Makassar Malay , Ambonese Malay , Dili Malay , Kupang Malay , Manado Malay , Papuan Malay , Pattani Malay , Satun Malay , Songkhla Malay , Bangkok Malay , and Sabah Malay , which may be more or less distinct from standard (Malaccan) Malay. Due to

3116-654: The actual ancestor of Classical Malay. Old Malay was influenced by Sanskrit, the classical language of India . Sanskrit loan words can be found in Old Malay vocabulary. The earliest known stone inscription in the Old Malay language was found in Sumatra , Indonesia, written in the Pallava variety of the Grantha alphabet and is dated 1 May 683. Known as the Kedukan Bukit inscription , it

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3192-451: The area around the Strait of Melaka. Islam was another pillar because it provided kingship with some of its core values. The commercial diaspora constituted a group of people outside the Strait of Melaka area— Borneo , Makassar and Java —who defined their Malayness primarily in terms of language and customs, which were the third and fourth accepted pillars of Malayness, respectively. While Islam

3268-549: The colonial language, Dutch, is no longer commonly spoken. (In East Timor , which was governed as a province of Indonesia from 1976 to 1999, Indonesian is widely spoken and recognized under its Constitution as a 'working language'.) Besides Indonesian , which developed from the Riau Malay dialect, there are many Malay varieties spoken in Indonesia; they are divided into western and eastern groups. Western Malay dialects are predominantly spoken in Sumatra and Borneo , which itself

3344-429: The concept of semangat ( spirit ) in every natural objects, was predominant among the ancient Malayic tribes before the arrival of Dharmic religions around the beginning of first millennium CE. The Dharmic period was in turn superseded by the introduction of Islam and the expansion of Malay sultanates in different parts of the region from the 12th century onwards. The term 'Melayu' (Malay) and its variants predates

3420-725: The constitution as one of two working languages (the other being English ), alongside the official languages of Tetum and Portuguese . The extent to which Malay is used in these countries varies depending on historical and cultural circumstances. Malay is the national language in Malaysia by Article 152 of the Constitution of Malaysia , and became the sole official language in Peninsular Malaysia in 1968 and in East Malaysia gradually from 1974. English continues, however, to be widely used in professional and commercial fields and in

3496-505: The court moved to establish the Johor Sultanate, it continued using the classical language; it has become so associated with Dutch Riau and British Johor that it is often assumed that the Malay of Riau is close to the classical language. However, there is no closer connection between Malaccan Malay as used on Riau and the Riau vernacular. Among the oldest surviving letters written in Malay are

3572-481: The early settlement of a Cape Malay community in Cape Town , who are now known as Coloureds , numerous Classical Malay words were brought into Afrikaans . The extent to which Malay and related Malayan languages are used in the countries where it is spoken varies depending on historical and cultural circumstances. Malay is the national language in Malaysia by Article 152 of the Constitution of Malaysia , and became

3648-474: The eastern part of the Malay or Nusantara archipelago and include Makassar Malay , Manado Malay , Ambonese Malay , North Moluccan Malay , Kupang Malay , Dili Malay , and Papuan Malay . The differences among both groups are quite observable. For example, the word kita means 'we, us' in western, but means 'I, me' in Manado, whereas 'we, us" in Manado is torang and Ambon katong (originally abbreviated from Malay kita orang 'we people'). Another difference

3724-493: The establishment of the Straits Settlements in 1824, the concept of a Malay ethnicity gradually became 'Malay nation', an identity that was accepted by both the colonial power and the Malays themselves, primarily as the result of the growing presence of others who were either European or Chinese. As early as the 1840s, the writer Abdullah Munshi used the term Bangsa Melayu ('Malay nation'), and that term gradually entered

3800-590: The far southern parts of the Philippines . They have traditionally been classified as Malay, Para-Malay, and Aboriginal Malay, but this reflects geography and ethnicity rather than a proper linguistic classification. The Malayic languages are mutually intelligible to varying extents, though the distinction between language and dialect is unclear in many cases. Para-Malay includes the Malayic languages of Sumatra . They are: Minangkabau , Central Malay (Bengkulu), Pekal , Talang Mamak , Musi (Palembang), Negeri Sembilan (Malaysia), and Duano’ . Aboriginal Malay are

3876-514: The highlands of Sumatra , Indonesia . Terengganu Inscription Stone (Malay: Batu Bersurat Terengganu ; Jawi: باتو برسورت ترڠݢانو ) is a granite stele carrying inscription in Jawi script that was found in Terengganu, Malaysia is the earliest evidence of classical Malay inscription. The inscription, dated possibly to 702 AH (corresponds to 1303 CE), constituted the earliest evidence of Jawi writing in

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3952-625: The historical association of Malay with Islam is entrenched in the Article 160 of the Constitution of Malaysia . A degree of Malayness is also retained outside Brunei and Malaysia, in particular, among communities in coaster areas of Sumatra and Kalimantan in Indonesia and Southern region of Thailand, which historically was part of the Malay sultanate. Regional religion: General: Malay language Malay ( / m ə ˈ l eɪ / mə- LAY ; Malay: Bahasa Melayu , Jawi : بهاس ملايو )

4028-554: The language is sometimes called Malacca, Johor or Riau Malay (or various combinations of those names) to distinguish it from the various other Malayic languages . According to Ethnologue 16, several of the Malayic varieties they currently list as separate languages, including the Orang Asli varieties of Peninsular Malay , are so closely related to standard Malay that they may prove to be dialects. There are also several Malay trade and creole languages (e.g. Ambonese Malay ) based on

4104-746: The languages' words for kinship, health, body parts and common animals. Numbers, especially, show remarkable similarities. Within Austronesian, Malay is part of a cluster of numerous closely related forms of speech known as the Malayic languages , which were spread across Malaya and the Indonesian archipelago by Malay traders from Sumatra. There is disagreement as to which varieties of speech popularly called "Malay" should be considered dialects of this language, and which should be classified as distinct Malay languages. The vernacular of Brunei— Brunei Malay —for example,

4180-454: The letters from Sultan Abu Hayat of Ternate , Maluku Islands in present-day Indonesia , dated around 1521–1522. The text is addressed to the king of Portugal , following contact with Portuguese explorer Francisco Serrão . The letters show sign of non-native usage; the Ternateans used (and still use) the unrelated Ternate language , a West Papuan language , as their first language . Malay

4256-478: The national language ( bahasa kebangsaan or bahasa nasional ) of several nation states with various official names: in Malaysia, it is designated as either Bahasa Malaysia (" Malaysian ") or also Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language"); in Singapore and Brunei, it is called Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language"); in Indonesia, an autonomous normative variety called Bahasa Indonesia (" Indonesian language ")

4332-441: The notion of Malayness began to characterise areas beyond Melaka, but it is generally believed that Malayisation intensified within the Strait of Melaka region following the territorial and commercial expansion of the sultanate in the mid-15th century. By the 16th and 17th centuries, 'Malay' and 'Malayness' were associated with two major elements; first, a line of kingship acknowledging descent from Srivijaya and Melaka; and second,

4408-431: The option of answering questions using Jawi. The Latin script, however, is the most commonly used in Brunei and Malaysia, both for official and informal purposes. Historically, Malay has been written using various scripts. Before the introduction of Arabic script in the Malay region, Malay was written using the Pallava , Kawi and Rencong scripts; these scripts are no longer frequently used, but similar scripts such as

4484-600: The pronunciation of words ending in the vowel 'a'. For example, in some parts of Malaysia and in Singapore, kita (inclusive 'we, us, our') is pronounced as /kitə/ , in Kelantan and Southern Thailand as /kitɔ/ , in Riau as /kita/ , in Palembang as /kito/ , in Betawi and Perak as /kitɛ/ and in Kedah and Perlis as /kitɑ/. Ethnonym For example, the dominant ethnic group of Germany

4560-432: The public sphere. The 1891 colonial census recognized three racial categories, namely, Chinese, Tamil, and Malay. With increased immigration of Chinese and Indian labour to Malaya in the early 1900s, a plural society was established, in which the concept of Malay as a nation became fixed and indelible. Malay nationalism , which developed in the early 1900s, had a cultural rather than a political character. The discussions on

4636-528: The region during the Malacca Sultanate era (1402–1511). It was the period the Malay language developed rapidly under the influence of Islamic literature. The development changed the nature of the language with massive infusion of Arabic , Sanskrit , and Tamil vocabularies, called Classical Malay . Under the Sultanate of Malacca the language evolved into a form recognisable to speakers of modern Malay. When

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4712-583: The sole official language in West Malaysia in 1968, and in East Malaysia gradually from 1974. English continues, however, to be widely used in professional and commercial fields and in the superior courts. Other minority languages are also commonly used by the country's large ethnic minorities. The situation in Brunei is similar to that of Malaysia. In Singapore, Malay was historically the lingua franca among people of different nationalities. Although this has largely given way to English, Malay still retains

4788-557: The sovereignty of individual subnational Malay sultanates and the position of Islam are preserved, a Malay identity is defined in Article 160 of the Constitution of Malaysia . The Malay World , the home of the Malayic Austronesian tribes since the last ice age (circa 15,000–10,000 BCE), exhibits fascinating ethnic, linguistic and cultural variations as a result of having inherited different layers of foreign influences. The indigenous Animistic belief system , which employed

4864-403: The state ideology of Malay Islamic Monarchy which proclaimed on the day of its independence on 1 January 1984. As a still functioning Malay sultanate, Brunei places Islamic institutions at the centre of the state's interest. It retains an elaborated Malay social hierarchy central to the community. In Malaysia, nine Malay sultanates were formally absorbed into the foundation of the modern state and

4940-435: The status of national language and the national anthem , Majulah Singapura , is entirely in Malay. In addition, parade commands in the military, police and civil defence are given only in Malay. Most residents of the five southernmost provinces of Thailand —a region that, for the most part, used to be part of an ancient Malay kingdom called Pattani —speak a dialect of Malay called Yawi (not to be confused with Jawi), which

5016-566: The struggle for Malaya's independence. The conservatives led by United Malays National Organization , that vehemently promoted Malay language, Islam and Malay monarchy as pillars of Malayness, emerged with popular support not only from general Malay population, but also from the Rulers of the Conference of Rulers . Mass protests from this group against the Malayan Union , a unitary state project, forced

5092-590: The superior courts. Other minority languages are also commonly used by the country's large ethnic minorities. The situation in Brunei is similar to that in Malaysia. In the Philippines , Indonesian is spoken by the overseas Indonesian community concentrated in Davao City . Functional phrases are taught to members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines as well as local students. Malay, like most Austronesian languages,

5168-418: The term 'Malay' is widely used and readily understood in the region, it remains open to varying interpretations due to its varied and fluid characteristics. 'Malay' as an identity, or nationality, is considered one of the most challenging and perplexing concepts in the multi-ethnic world of Southeast Asia . Much of the ethos of Malay identity are thought to originate from the ascendancy of Melaka Sultanate in

5244-515: The term 'Melayu' then beginning to appear as interchangeable with Melakans, especially in describing the cultural preferences of the Melakans as compared to those of foreigners. Tome Pires explained how Melaka itself classified merchants into four groups, among which the Malayos or Melayu did not appear, suggesting they were not then regarded as a category outside of Melaka itself. It remains unclear when

5320-406: Was an objective criterion to define the kingship and his subjects (Muslim and non-Muslims), anyone who claimed to embrace Islam could be counted as Malay. Non-Muslims and non-Malays could be labelled as Malays as long as they spoke and wrote Malay and followed a Malay way of life, or if they Masuk Melayu —meaning, don certain clothes, follow certain culinary practices, and become an integral part of

5396-612: Was discovered by the Dutchman M. Batenburg on 29 November 1920 at Kedukan Bukit, South Sumatra , on the banks of the Tatang, a tributary of the Musi River . It is a small stone of 45 by 80 centimetres (18 by 31 in). For centuries, Srivijaya , through its expansion, economic power and military prowess, was responsible for the widespread of Old Malay throughout the Malay Archipelago . It

5472-452: Was gradually replaced by the Rumi script. Malay is spoken in Brunei , Indonesia , Malaysia , East Timor , Singapore and southern Thailand . Indonesia regulates its own normative variety of Malay, while Malaysia and Singapore use a common standard. Brunei, in addition to Standard Malay, uses a distinct vernacular dialect called Brunei Malay . In East Timor , Indonesian is recognised by

5548-478: Was recommended that only a fraction of them be employed for the purposes of cataloguing. Ethnonyms can change in character over time; while originally socially acceptable, they may come to be considered offensive . For instance, the term gypsy has been used to refer to the Romani . Other examples include Vandal , Bushman , Barbarian , and Philistine . The ethnonyms applied to African Americans have demonstrated

5624-499: Was stated "to the Muslims, terms like Negro and colored are labels created by white people to negate the past greatness of the black race". Four decades later, a similar difference of opinion remains. In 2006, one commentator suggested that the term Negro is outdated or offensive in many quarters; similarly, the word "colored" still appears in the name of the NAACP , or National Association for

5700-601: Was the working language of traders and it was used in various ports, and marketplaces in the region. Other evidence is the Tanjung Tanah Law in post-Pallava letters. This 14th-century pre-Islamic legal text was produced in the Adityawarman era (1345–1377) of Dharmasraya , a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom that arose after the end of Srivijayan rule in Sumatra . The laws were for the Minangkabau people , who today still live in

5776-903: Was used solely as a lingua franca for inter-ethnic communications. Malay is a member of the Austronesian family of languages, which includes languages from Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean , with a smaller number in continental Asia . Malagasy , a geographic outlier spoken in Madagascar in the Indian Ocean , is also a member of this language family. Although these languages are not necessarily mutually intelligible to any extent, their similarities are often quite apparent. In more conservative languages like Malay, many roots have come with relatively little change from their common ancestor, Proto-Austronesian language . There are many cognates found in

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