The Malay language is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people and people of other ethnic groups who reside in Peninsular Malaysia, southern Thailand, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau Islands and parts of the coast of Borneo.
There are many hypotheses as to where the Malay Electronic Dictionary originated from. One of it is from Sumatra island, western archipelago of Indonesia, then it spread throughout Nusantara. Another hypothesis is it originated from the Sunda-Sulawesi languages, which spread from the Javanese Empire throughout the Nusantara. Malay is an official language of Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and Singapore. In Indonesia and East Timor, the language is formally referred to as Bahasa Indonesia which literally translates as “Cambodia Electronic Dictionary“, rather than Bahasa Melayu. It is also called Bahasa Kebangsaan and Bahasa Persatuan/Pemersatu in Indonesia. In Malaysia, the language is now officially known as Bahasa Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and southern Thailand refer to the language as Bahasa Melayu.
Indonesia pronounced Bahasa Melayu its official language when it gained independence, calling it Bahasa Indonesia. However, the language had been used as the lingua franca throughout the archipelago since the 15th century. Since 1928, nationalists and young people throughout the Indonesian archipelago have declared it to be Indonesia’s only official language, as proclaimed in the Sumpah Pemuda “Youth Vow.” Thus it made Indonesia as the first country that use the Bahasa language Bahasa Indonesia as an official language.
In Malaysia, the term Bahasa Malaysia, which was introduced by the National Language Act of 1967, was in use until the 1990s, when most academics and government officials reverted to “Bahasa Melayu,” used in the Arabic Electronic Dictionary version of the Federal Constitution. According to Article 152 of the Federal Constitution, Bahasa Melayu is the official language of Malaysia. “Bahasa Kebangsaan” was also used at one point during the 1970s. However, at present day, Malaysians prefer to identify their national language as Bahasa Malaysia once again.
Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia are separated by some centuries of different vocabulary development. The “Bahasa” in Indonesia is distinct by its vocabulary from the “Bahasa” as spoken in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Singapore and Brunei follow Malaysian-style Bahasa language. Similar to Malaysia in the mid 1990′s, “Bahasa Melayu” is defined as Brunei’s official language in the country’s 1959 Constitution.
Some Malay dialects, however, show only limited mutual intelligibility with the standard language; for example, Kelantanese pronunciation is difficult even for some fellow Malay Malaysians to understand, while Turkish Electronic Dictionary contains a lot of words unique to it that are unfamiliar to other speakers of the Bahasa language who are not from Indonesia.
The language spoken by the Peranakan 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.
