Malay language

Malay is an Austronesian language spoken natively across several islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and on the Malay Peninsula in mainland Asia. It holds official status in Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore, where the standardized versions are called Standard Malay. In Indonesia, a separate standardized form known as Indonesian serves as the official language, and it is also one of the working languages of Timor-Leste. As an ethnic language, Malay is spoken by the Malay people in Sumatra, Borneo, and surrounding Indonesian islands, as well as on the Malay Peninsula, in the southeastern Philippines, southern Thailand, and the Southern Province of Sri Lanka. Around 80 million people speak it as a first language, and nearly 300 million speak it as either a first or second language.

The language is pluricentric and considered a macrolanguage—essentially a group of mutually intelligible speech varieties forming a dialect continuum, which lacks a single traditional name and whose speakers may view the varieties as distinct languages. Several of these varieties have been standardized as national languages under different official names. In Malaysia, it is called either "Malay language" or, in some contexts, "Malaysian language." In Singapore and Brunei, it is referred to as "Malay language," though in Brunei this denotes a formal standard distinct from the local vernacular. In Indonesia, an autonomous normative variety called "Indonesian language" is designated as the unifying language or lingua franca, while the term "Malay" refers to the vernacular varieties indigenous to areas of central to southern Sumatra and West Kalimantan, spoken as the ethnic languages of the Malay people there.

Classical Malay, also known as Court Malay, was the literary standard of the pre-colonial Malacca and Johor Sultanates. It is sometimes called Malacca, Johor, or Riau Malay (or combinations of these names) to differentiate it from other Malayic languages. According to Ethnologue 16, several Malayic varieties currently listed as separate languages—including those of the Malay Peninsula—are so closely related to standard Malay that they may actually be dialects. Additionally, there are various Malay trade and creole languages, such as Ambonese Malay, which are based on a lingua franca derived from Classical Malay, as well as Makassar Malay, which appears to be a mixed language.

**Origin** Historical linguists generally agree that the Malayic homeland was likely in western Borneo. A form known as Proto-Malayic was spoken there by at least 1000 BCE and is considered the ancestral language of all subsequent Malayic languages. Its own ancestor, Proto-Malayo-Polynesian—a descendant of Proto-Austronesian—began to break up by at least 2000 BCE, possibly due to the southward expansion of Austronesian peoples from Taiwan into Maritime Southeast Asia.

**History** The history of the Malay language is divided into five periods: Old Malay, the Transitional Period, Classical Malay, Late Modern Malay, and Modern Malay. Old Malay is believed to be the actual ancestor of Classical Malay. It was influenced by Sanskrit, the ancient Indo-Aryan language of India, and Sanskrit loanwords appear in its vocabulary. The earliest known stone inscription in Old Malay was found on the island of Sumatra, written in the Pallava variety of the Grantha alphabet and dated 1 May 683. Known as the Kedukan Bukit inscription, it was discovered by the Dutchman C. J. Batenburg on 29 November 1920 at Kedukan Bukit, along the banks of the Tatang River, a tributary of the Musi River near Palembang in present-day South Sumatra, Indonesia. The stone measures approximately [dimensions omitted in source]. For centuries, the maritime empire of Srivijaya, based on Sumatra from the 7th to the 11th centuries, spread Old Malay throughout the Malay Peninsula and the Malay Archipelago through its expansion and economic power. Old Malay served as the lingua franca of traders and was widely used in ports and marketplaces across the region.

The Tanjung Tanah Law was a 14th-century pre-Islamic legal text produced during the reign of Adityawarman (1345–1377) of the Melayu Kingdom (also known as Malayu or Dharmasraya Kingdom), a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom that arose after the end of Srivijayan rule in Sumatra. These laws were intended for the Minangkabau people, who still live in the highlands of Sumatra, Indonesia.

The Terengganu Inscription Stone is a granite stele bearing an inscription in Jawi script, discovered in Terengganu on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula (in present-day Malaysia). It is considered the earliest evidence of Classical Malay. Dated to approximately 702 AH (1303 CE), it is the oldest known evidence of Jawi writing in the Malay world and one of the earliest testimonies to the arrival of Islam as a state religion in the region. The inscription contains a proclamation issued by a ruler of Terengganu, called Seri Paduka Tuan, urging his subjects to uphold and propagate Islam and outlining ten basic Sharia laws as guidance.

Classical Malay became widely used as the region’s lingua franca during the Malacca Sultanate (1402–1511), a powerful maritime kingdom strategically located along the Strait of Malacca that served as a hub for international trade and Islamic learning. During this period, the Malay language developed rapidly under the influence of Islamic literature.