For centuries, Malaysia has been home to a significant amount of cross-cultural societal interaction and influence. As a result, its official language, Bahasa Melayu, retains a great deal of linguistic borrowings from other languages outside of its own language family. Malay is a member of the Austronesian language family, found throughout Southeast Asia as well as in native languages of present-day Taiwan. Perhaps the most sustained influence comes from its neighboring Sino-Tibetan language Chinese simply due to proximity, and one area where I saw this influence almost immediately was in Malay's number structure (i.e. "25" is said as the equivalent of two-ten-five). Beyond this, however, the Chinese influence is somewhat limited and not as present as two other languages are: Arabic and English. This is because modern Malay's origins lie most closely in the Malaccan Sultanate.
Arabic's influence on Malay began in the 15th century following contact with Arab traders in Malacca, an early and very prominent trade hub at the time that featured a Sultanate. This Arabic influence ended up altering Malay's orthography, introducing the Jawi script. Many words and several sounds exist in Malay because of Arabic's influence, e.g. "Salamat" as a greeting term in both Arabic and Malay. The next major linguistic influence, English, came from British colonialism between the 18th and 20th centuries in the region. As a colony, Malaysia became introduced to linguistic loanwords and structures, and, most notably, changed its orthography to a romanization using the same alphabetic script as English. To date, Malay uses a great deal of English terminology (e.g. the name for non-native instruments such as piano and guitar remaining the same in Malay as they are in English), and its linguistic structure is S-V-O like English (and Chinese).
It is important to recognize these major cultural influences on Malay not just to increase my vocabulary, but also to more deeply understand the processes behind how the language changed and developed over time. Languages are dynamic, and major historical events and cultural developments can have an indelible impact on them. Linguists have to track these changes by being aware of the surrounding historical and cultural influences, which is no small task. Aspects of language such as slang can be difficult to predict or, conversely, come with preexisting cultural connotations, so it is important for linguists to try to remove as many of their own personal biases as possible in assessing neologisms in any given language. English as a lingua franca and the United States as a cultural hegemon have profound reach globally and are contributing to rapid changes in languages everywhere.
Comments