ABSTRACT
Malay-Indonesian is an Austronesian language spoken in many diverse forms throughout Southeast Asia. The indigenous name of the language is Bahasa Melayu (literally, ‘the Malay language’), but the standard variety used in Indonesia (along with some regional colloquial varieties) is called Bahasa Indonesia (‘the Indonesian language’). Similar forms of standard Malay-Indonesian serve as the national languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore;2 the latter three are particularly close to each other. This chapter, unless otherwise noted, will be dealing with the most widely used variety, standard Indonesian, which will be referred to simply as ‘Indonesian’. Standard Malay as used in Malaysia will be referred to as ‘Malaysian’. With over 250 million speakers, Malay-Indonesian is the most widely spoken language
in Southeast Asia. Most speakers, however, do not acquire it as their first language. The number of native speakers is difficult to estimate; perhaps 20 per cent of the current total number of speakers acquired a colloquial variety of Malay-Indonesian as their first language. This figure is rapidly increasing, as more and more people in Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei shift from their ancestral home languages to Malay-Indonesian. As will be explained below, colloquial varieties of Malay-Indonesian exhibit a great diversity, and most are quite different from the standard variety discussed in this chapter. Malay-Indonesian is a member of the Malayic subgroup of Western Malayo-Polynesian,
a branch of the Austronesian language family. While there is wide agreement about the existence of the Malayic subgroup (and within it of Malay-Indonesian as a separate language), linguists have not been able to agree on its classification, either external or internal. Malayic used to be classified together with Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Acehnese and Lampung in a putative ‘Malayo-Javanic’ branch, but strong doubts have been cast on the validity of this classification. It is now clear that Malayic is more closely related to the Chamic languages, spoken in Cambodia, Vietnam and Hainan Island (southern China), than to any of the above languages. Recent research indicates that MalayoChamic languages are in turn most closely related to Bali-Sasak-Sumbawan, a group of languages spoken on several islands east of Java. One factor hindering the external
from Malay-Indonesian, which has served as a regional lingua franca for many centuries. Similarly, no linguistic criteria have been established for distinguishing between Malayic languages and dialects of Malay-Indonesian, and there are no widely accepted subgrouping theories for either. Many scholars in the field have therefore preferred using the neutral term ‘isolect’ to refer to any Malayic speech form which has a name of its own and is regarded by its speakers as distinct from other varieties. This practice will be followed in this chapter. Malayic isolects vary greatly, and many of them are not mutually intelligible. They
fall into several broad categories. Some, like Riau Malay (spoken in the Riau-Lingga archipelago in Indonesia) or Kedah Malay (spoken in the Malaysian state of Kedah), are thought to be direct descendants of Proto Malayic, a hypothetical language reconstructed on the basis of modern isolects. Other isolects, however, have had a more complex history, and owe their emergence to language contact and language shift. For example Betawi, the language of the indigenous ethnic group of Jakarta, is based on Malay, but has incorporated lexical and grammatical elements from Balinese, Javanese, Sundanese, Portuguese Creole and Chinese languages, which were spoken by the ancestors of today’s speakers. Some isolects have developed from pidginised forms of Malay, collectively known as Bazaar Malay, which originally served only for inter-ethnic communication, not as a first language. Baba Malay, spoken by acculturated Chinese communities in Malacca, Penang and Singapore, is thought to have developed from Bazaar Malay, which gradually became the speakers’ first language. Most Malayic isolects spoken in eastern Indonesia have probably also developed from early pidginised forms of Malay. This complex situation has contributed to the difficulty of classifying Malayic isolects. Colloquial varieties of Malay-Indonesian differ greatly from each other and, as already
mentioned, also from the standard language. These differences may involve any aspect: pronunciation, word formation, syntax, lexicon, semantics and pragmatics. It will of course be impossible to describe all these diverse varieties within this chapter. Therefore, as mentioned above, the description will involve mainly one variety, standard Indonesian. However, it should always be kept in mind that this is just one of a very large number of diverse varieties.
