Phonology in Malay Language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_language
http://www.101languages.net/malay/diphthongs.html
http://www.101languages.net/malay/vowels.html
http://www.101languages.net/malay/consonants.html

Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family and the official language of
Malaysia and Brunei; a standardized variety of Malay called Indonesian is official in
Indonesia. It is one of four official languages of Singapore, and as Indonesian is a
working language of East Timor, a consequence of over twenty years of Indonesian
administration. It is spoken natively by 40 million people [5] across the Malacca Strait,
including the coasts of the Malay Peninsula of Malaysia and southern Thailand, Riau
province, the eastern coast of Sumatra, and the Riau Islands in Indonesia, as has been
established as a native language of Jakarta and of part of western coastal Sarawak and
Kalimantan in Borneo. As a second language, it is spoken by an estimated 140 million,
mostly under the guise of "Indonesian".[6]
In Malaysia, the standard language is called Bahasa Malaysia "Malaysian language". In
Singapore, Brunei, southern Thailand, and the southern Philippines it is called Bahasa
Melayu "Malay language", and in Indonesia it is generally called Bahasa Indonesia,
"Indonesian language", though Bahasa Nasional "National Language" and Bahasa
Persatuan/Pemersatu "Unifying Language" are also heard. However, in areas of Sumatra
and Riau where the language is indigenous, Indonesians refer to it as Bahasa Melayu.

Origin
There are many hypotheses as to where the Malay language originated. One of these is
that it came from Sumatra island. The oldest written documents in Malay, dated from the
end of the 7th century AD, were found on Bangka Island, off the southeastern coast of
Sumatra and in Palembang in southern Sumatra. "Malayu" was the name of an old
kingdom located in Jambi province in eastern Sumatra. It was known in ancient Chinese
texts as "Mo-lo-yo" and mentioned in the Nagarakertagama, an old Javanese epic written
in 1365, as one of the "tributary states" of the Majapahit kingdom in eastern Java.
The use of Malay throughout insular and peninsular Southeast Asia is linked to the rise of
Muslim kingdoms and the spread of Islam, itself a consequence of growing regional
trade.
Indonesia pronounced a variety of Malay its official language when it gained
independence, calling it Bahasa Indonesia. However, the language had already been used
as the lingua franca throughout the archipelago since the 15th century. Since 1928,
nationalists and young people throughout the Indonesian archipelago declared it to be
Indonesia's only official language, as proclaimed in the Sumpah Pemuda "Youth Vow."
Thus Indonesia was the first country to designate it as an official language. In several
parts of Indonesia, in Sumatra and Borneo Islands, Malay is spoken as local dialect of
ethnic Malays.[7]
In Malaysia, the term Bahasa Malaysia was in use until the 1990s, when most academics
and government officials reverted to "Bahasa Melayu," used in the Malay version of the
Federal Constitution. According to Article 152 of the Federal , Malay is the official
language of Malaysia. "Bahasa Kebangsaan" (National Language) was also used at one
point during the 1970s. At present day, the government is referring to the language as
Bahasa Malaysia again.[citation needed]
Similar to Malaysia in the mid 1990's, "Bahasa
Melayu" was defined as Brunei's official language in the country's 1959 Constitution.
Indonesian and Malay are separated by some centuries of different vocabulary
development, partly due to the influence of different colonial languages; Dutch in the
case of Indonesia, formerly the Dutch East Indies and English in the case of Malaysia,
Singapore and Brunei, which were formerly under British rule.
Some Malay dialects, however, show only limited mutual intelligibility with the standard
language; for example, Kelantanese pronunciation is difficult even for some fellow
Malay speakers to understand, while Indonesian contains many words unique to it that
are unfamiliar to speakers of Malay (some because of Javanese , Sundanese, or other
local language influence, and some because the language has been modified by
youngsters).
The language spoken by the Peranakan (Straits Chinese, a hybrid of Chinese settlers from
the Ming Dynasty and local Malays) is a unique patois of Malay and the Chinese
Hokkien dialect, which is mostly spoken in the former Straits Settlements of Penang and
Malacca in Malaysia, and the Indonesian Archipelago.

[edit] History
Main article: Old Malay
The history of the Malay language can be divided into five periods: Old Malay, the
Transitional Period, the Malacca Period, Late Modern Malay, and modern Malay.
Old Malay is unintelligible to a speaker of modern Malay.[citation needed]
It was heavily
influenced by Sanskrit, the lingua franca of Hinduism and Buddhism. The earliest known
inscription in the Old Malay language was found in Sumatra, written in Pallava variant of
[8]
Grantha script and dates back to 7th century - known as Kedukan Bukit Inscription, it
was discovered by the Dutchman M. Batenburg on 29 November 1920, at Kedukan
Bukit, South Sumatra, on the banks of the River Tatang, a tributary of the River Musi. It
is a small stone of 45 by 80 cm.
The Malay language came into widespread use as the trade language of the Sultanate of
Malacca (1402–1511). During this 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, and Hindi or Sanskrit vocabularies. Under the Sultanate
of Malacca the language evolved into a form recognizable to speakers of modern Malay.

[edit] Classification and related languages

See also: Austronesian languages#Cross-linguistic Comparison Chart
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 linguistic family. Although each language of the family is mutually
unintelligible, their similarities are rather striking. Many roots have come virtually
unchanged from their common Austronesian ancestor. There are many cognates found in
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 Malay 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 local language
of Brunei, Brunei Malay, for example, is not readily unintelligible with the standard
language, and the same is true with some varieties on the Malay Peninsula such as Kedah
Malay. However, both Brunei and Kedah are quite close.[9]
The closest relatives of the Malay languages are those left behind on Sumatra, such as
Minangkabau with 5½ million speakers on the west coast.

[edit] Writing system

Main article: Malay alphabet
Malay is normally written using Latin alphabet called Rumi, although a modified Arabic
script called Jawi also exists. Rumi is official in Malaysia and Singapore, and Indonesian
has a different official orthography also using the Latin script. Rumi and Jawi are co-
official in Brunei. Efforts are currently being undertaken to preserve Jawi script and to
revive its use amongst Malays in Malaysia, and students taking Malay language
examination in Malaysia have the option of answering questions using Jawi script. The
Latin alphabet, however, is still the most commonly used script in 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 Pallava, Kawi and Rencong
script and these are still in use today by the Champa Malay in 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 Sultanate of Malacca, 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 was gradually replaced by the Rumi script.[10]

[edit] Extent of use

Main article: Varieties of Malay
See also: Malay-based creole languages
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 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.

[edit] Phonology
Note: this article uses the orthography of Malaysian Malay. For Indonesian
orthography, see Indonesian language.
Table of consonant phonemes of Malay
Labio- Post-
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Dental Alveolar
Nasal m /m/ n /n/ ny /ɲ/ ng /ŋ/
p b t d k g /
Plosive
/p/ /b/ /t/ /d/ /k/ ɡ/
j /
Affricate c /t͡ʃ/
d͡ʒ/
f v sy /ʃ, ʂ,
Fricative s /s/ z /z/ h /h/
/f/ /v/ sj/
Approximant y /j/ w /w/
Lateral l /l/
Trill r /r/
Orthographic Note:

• The combination of /ŋɡ/ is represented as ngg.

Table of vowel phonemes of Malay
Height Front Central Back
Close i /i/ u /u/
Mid e /e, ɛ/ e /ə/ o /o, ɔ/
 Open a /a/ a /ɑ/
Table diphthongs of Malay
Orthography IPA
ai /aɪ̯, ai/
au /aʊ̯, au/
ua /ua/
There are two vowels represented by the letter "e", i.e. /e, ɛ/ and /ə/. Learners of Malay
are expected to distinguish between the two sounds while learning each new word.
In some parts of Peninsular Malaysia, especially in the central and southern regions, most
words which end with the letter a tend to be pronounced /ə/.
Stress in Malay words is traditionally said to be either on the final or penultimate
syllable, depending on regional variations as well as the presence of the shwa (/ə/) in the
word. However, there is some disagreement among linguists on this issue, with at least
one researcher suggesting that in some dialects there is no lexical stress at all.[11]