Malay Language
Malay is an Austronesian language predominantly spoken by Malay people in northeastern of Sumatra to the Riau Islands and its surroundings; which includes Singapore and Malay Peninsula, as well as the western and northernmost coast of Borneo (especially in Pontianak and Brunei).
| Malay | |
|---|---|
| Melayu ملايو | |
| Native to |  Malaysia Singapore Brunei Thailand Indonesia |
| Ethnicity | Malay |
Native speakers | 12 million (2007) |
Austronesian
| |
Standard forms | Standard Malay |
| Official status | |
Official language in | Malaysia Singapore Brunei ASEAN |
Recognised minority language in | |
| Regulated by |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | ms |
| ISO 639-3 | zsm – Standard Malay |
 Countries where Malay is official or recognized | |
Writing system
Malay is normally written with the Latin alphabet called Rumi. But there is also a modified Arabic alphabet that is called Jawi. Rumi is official in Malaysia and Singapore, and the Indonesian language has a different official orthography that uses also the Latin script. Rumi and Jawi are both official languages in Brunei. Efforts are currently being undertaken to preserve Jawi script and to revive its use amongst Malays in Malaysia, and students taking the Malay language examination in Malaysia have the option of answering questions using Jawi script. But the Latin alphabet is still the most commonly used script in Malaysia, both for official and informal purposes.
Historically, Malay has been written in various types of script. Before the introduction of Arabic script in the Malay region, Malay was written using Pallava, Kawi and Rencong script and are still in use today by the Champa Malay in Vietnam and Cambodia.
References
This article uses material from the Wikipedia Simple English article Malay language, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
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