Short History of The Malay Language by A. Adelaar

MALAY: A SHORT HISTORY
Author(s): K. ALEXANDER ADELAAR

Source: Oriente Moderno, Nuova serie, Anno 19 (80), Nr. 2, ALAM MELAYU IL MONDO
MALESE: LINGUA, STORIA, CULTURA (2000), pp. 225-242
Published by: Istituto per l'Oriente C. A. Nallino
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K. ALEXANDER ADELAAR
MALAY: A SHORT HISTORY*
Introduction
Malay, ornesia,Indonesian, as itlanguage

is the most important is called in its
in South-east Asia. standardised
It is the form in Indo
national language of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore. It is
spoken by most citizens of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, which to
gether have a population of more than 220 million. It is also the language
of more than one million Malays in the south of Thailand.
Malay is of enormous importance as an official language and as a sec
ond language. However, Malay is only one of the many languages in the
area. In fact, the number of people who speak a form of Malay as their
first language is relatively small and they are easily outnumbered by peo
ple who speak Javanese, Vietnamese or Thai at home. Quite apart from
this, a great number of other languages are spoken in South-east-Asia and
the Pacific area, and it may be of some interest to give a quick overview
of their variety.
Language Variety in South-East Asia and the Pacific

Counting languages in areas which have not yet been subject to intensive
linguistic study is basically impossible. This is so because one often does
not really know what languages there are spoken in that area, and there is
the problem of distinguishing languages versus dialects: without having
studied a number of related speech forms there is often no way of telling
whether these forms are dialects of each other or whether they should be
counted as separate languages. While trying to account for these difficul
ties, linguists estimate the number of languages in South-east Asia and
the Pacific at more than 2,000.
As far as their historical relationships are concerned, the languages in
South-east Asia and the Pacific can be classified into six 'language fami
lies', that is, groups of languages that are historically related and must
have diverged from a single (usually prehistorical) stock-language or
proto-language. The six language families are Sino-Tibetan, Tai, Austro
Asiatic, Miao-Yao, Austronesian and Papuan. It would go far beyond the
scope of this paper to give an overview of these language families, each
* - An earlier draft of this article appeared under the same title in 1998 in: South Pa
cific Journal of Psychology (Special Issue: Asia-Pacific Language Research), Dar
win, X/l, p. 1-13.
OM, n.s. XIX (LXXX), 2, 2000
226 K. ALEXANDER ADELAAR
of which is represented by several language members in the area. The fol

lowing account is therefore very brief.
There are about 250 Sino-Tibetan languages which are spoken in
Burma, China, Tibet, Nepal, India and Pakistan, and they include Chinese
and Tibetan. The most important Sino-Tibetan language in South-east
Asia is Burmese.
The Austro-Asiatic family has members in all mainland South-east
Asian countries, in China, and in Bangla Desh, Bhutan and India (includ
ing the Nicobar Islands in the Gulf of Bengal). Its most prominent mem
bers are Vietnamese, Khmer (the national language of Kampuchea). An
other important member of this language family is Mon, a language of
major cultural and political significance in the past but now reduced to a
minority language spoken in several areas in Lower Burma and Thailand.
The Tai language family is represented in South China (Yunnan),
Thailand and Laos. The two most frequently spoken Tai languages are
Thai and Lao, which is closely related to Thai.
Miao-Yao languages are spoken by small minorities in Vietnam,
Laos, Thailand, Burma and south China.
The Austronesian language family (to which Indonesian/Malay be
longs) has approximately a thousand members (Blust personal communi
cation). These are mainly spoken in the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia,
Indonesia (including East Timor), Madagascar (East Africa), Taiwan and
the Pacific (Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia (but excluding most of
New Guinea and some its surrounding areas). They are also represented
in many mainland South-east Asian countries by a few minority langua
ges, such as the Chamic languages of southern Vietnam and Kampuchea,
Moken and Moklen in the South-eastern tip of Burma, and Malay in
South Thailand. Many Austronesian languages have large numbers of
speakers (see below).
The Papuan languages number about 750 (Foley 1986, p. 3). They are
spoken in New Guinea, and furthermore in Northern Halmahera, Alor,
Pantar, and parts of East Timor and Kisar in Indonesia, and in parts of
New Britain, New Ireland and the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. New
Guinea and surrounding areas have the greatest linguistic diversity in the
world (Wurm 1982). The term 'Papuan' is actually a cover term for all
non-Austronesian languages in the Pacific area. It is very likely that Pap
uan languages represent more than one language family. In fact, some
linguists even claim that there are more than sixty independent language
families (Foley 1986, p. 3).
Austronesian Languages: Homeland and Classification

Together with Indo-European languages, Austronesian languages have
the equal largest geographical distribution in the world, with members
spread across the Pacific and Indian Ocean from the African coast to
Vietnam, Taiwan, Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand. Many Aus
MALAY: A SHORT HISTORY 227
tronesian languages have large numbers of native speakers, such as Java

nese (more than 60 million), Malay (up to 30 million), Sundanese (20
million; spoken in West Java), Cebuano (11,5 million, Philippines),
Tagalog (10 million, Philippines) and Malagasy (10 million, Madagas
car).
The probable place of origin or 'homeland' of the earliest speakers of
Austronesian languages is Taiwan, where up to this day the pre-Chinese
minority of Taiwanese 'Aboriginals' speak languages that belong to
many separate 'first-order branches' within the Austronesian language
family. A language ancestral to all Austronesian languages ('Proto
Austronesian') must have been spoken there between 4,000 and 3,000
BC (Pawley 1997). According to Robert Blust, the Austronesian lan
guage family is divided into up to nine branches; eight of these are repre
sented by the so-called Formosan languages (indigenous languages of
Taiwan), and a ninth branch is represented by the 'Malayo-Polynesian'
languages, which include all other Austronesian languages (Blust 1999,
p. 53). Comparing archaeological and comparative linguistic research re
sults, Pawley estimates that migrations of Malayo-Polynesian speakers
into Indonesia, the Philippines and the West Pacific area must have taken
place some time between 2,000 and 1,000 BC (Pawley 1999, p. 96).
The Malayo-Polynesian subgroup in turn may have two branches:
West-Malayo-Polynesian and Central-East-Malayo-Polynesian.
West-Malayo-Polynesian includes all Philippine languages, all Aus
tronesian languages on the South-east Asian mainland, Malagasy, the
languages of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Sulawesi, Bali, Lombok and West
Sumbawa and Palauan and Chamorro (two languages from the Microne
sian area).
Central-East-Malayo-Polynesian splits into Central-Malayo-Polyne
sian (the languages of the central and South Moluccas spreading from
East Sumbawa to the east, and including the Kei - and Aru Islands) and
East-Malayo-Polynesian (the languages from South Halmaheira, Austro
nesian languages from West New Guinea, and the Oceanic languages
(Melanesian, Micronesian and Polynesian) (Blust 1980, p. ll).
Malay belongs to the West-Malayo-Polynesian subgroup. This sub
group is a problematic one. There seems to be no linguistic criterion to
define it, and its internal classification remains unclear. It may not be
more than just a ragbag for languages that are not Central- and East
Malayo-Polynesian (Blust 1999, p. 68).
The Languages of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei

The languages of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, then, mainly belong to
the Austronesian language family, except for a handful of Austro-Asiatic
('Aslian') languages spoken by part of the Orang Asli (original people or
Aboriginals) in Malaysia, and for the Papuan languages in East Indone
sia. Although the Papuan languages in East Indonesia are very numerous,
228 K- ALEXANDER ADELAAR
the total number of speakers of these languages probably does not exceed
one percent of the Indonesian population.
Malay has the highest number of speakers in Indonesia, but many of
these speakers have another language as their mother tongue, and Java
nese is in fact the language with the highest number of native speakers.
The linguistic variety of Indonesia is relatively low in the west (especially
in Java) and gets higher towards the east (especially in Irian Jaya).
Within the West Malayo-Polynesian subgroup, Malay is a member of
the Malayic subgroup which consists of all Malay dialects and of all lan
guages that are related closely enough to Malay as to form a separate
subgroup with it.1 Such dialects and languages include, among others,
Minangkabau, Banjarese (spoken in South Borneo), Jakarta Malay, Ke
lantanese Malay, Urak Lawoi' (spoken in Southwest Thailand), Iban and
Kendayan (both 'Dayak' languages from West Borneo (Adelaar 1992).
As far as basic vocabulary and early phonological developments show,
the Malayic subgroup is most closely related to the Chamic languages of
Indo-China and North Sumatra.2 Also closely related to Malayic (but
more remotely so than Chamic) are Sundanese and Madurese, and, to a
less extent, Javanese (Nothofer 1985).
A History of Malay
For more than a millenium, Malay has been a very important lingua
franca in insular South-east Asia. Standardised forms of it became the na
tional language in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, and (known as Indo
nesian) in Indonesia. Indonesian is somewhat different in its vocabulary,
idiom and, to some extent, also in its pronunciation, from the official Ma
lay of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Grammatically, however, these
standard varieties are very much the same, differing mainly in the fre
quency of use of certain grammatical features common to all varieties
rather than in exhibiting different grammatical features.
Although the official Malay of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei is es
sentially the same language, the official Malay of Brunei has a pronuncia
tion which is closer to that of Indonesian. It furthermore uses an elaborate
set of terms of address and reference. This set reflects Bruneian society,
which is very stratified and essentially feudal.
Traditional areas of Malay civilisation are the coastal regions of the
South China Sea, and more particularly, South-east Sumatra, the Malay
1 - Qualitative evidence for this subgroup are ten phonological changes vis- -vis
Proto Austronesian that are shared by all its members (Adelaar 1992).
2 - Thurgood includes Acehnese (North Sumatra) within the Chamic subgroup. The
close relationship between Malayic and Chamic has never been the object of scrutiny,
but from Thurgoods reconstruction of Proto Chamic it is clear that Proto Chamic
phonology developed from Proto Austronesian in a way which was almost identical
to the way in which Proto Malayic phonology did (Thurgood 1999).
peninsula and West Borneo. Where Malay really originated (the Malay
'homeland') is still under discussion. It most likely did not come from the
Malay peninsula, in spite of earlier scholarly beliefs (cf. Kern 1889). A
Malay homeland in the peninsula is contradicted by the demography of
the place (originally with Malays living in coastal areas and Orang Asli
living in inland areas) as well as by the fact that most Malays migrated to
the peninsula in historical times and trace their origins to Sumatra. South
Sumatra would be a better candidate and finds support in the traditional
beliefs of the Malays and in the mythical-historical accounts of a king
dom called Srivijaya in the Sejarah Melayu ('Malay Annals'), one of the
most important Malay literary works, which was composed in the 16th
century. On linguistic grounds, however, it appears that West Borneo,
with its great diversity of Malayic languages, is as least as likely the
homeland of Malay as is Sumatra. The linguists' argument is that, given
the spread of a number of related languages, the area with the relatively
largest diversity of these languages (in relation to its size) is most likely
to be the homeland (Adelaar 1985, p. 239; 1992).3 A West Bornean
homeland would not necessarily be in contradiction with South Sumatra
as the cradle of Malay civilisation: in prehistorical times, people speaking
some early form of Malay may have left West Borneo and settled in
South Sumatra, where they integrated several foreign cultural influences
and established a polity (called Srivijaya at one stage) that soon gained
political and economical momentum. A new identity came about which
underwent various later transformations but survived the times and be
came known as Malay.
Malay has one of the longest written histories of all Austronesian lan
guages.4 The oldest written evidence of Malay dates from the end of the
7th century AD and consists of a number of stone inscriptions found in
South-east Sumatra and on neighbouring Bangka Island. These inscrip
tions are written in a very archaic form of Malay full of Sanskrit loan
words. The strong Sanskrit influence which Malay underwent in that pe
riod is still witnessed by the hundreds of Sanskrit loanwords in present
day Malay, of which the following are but a few examples: bumi 'earth';
merd ka5 'independence'; negen 'country'; agama 'religion'; dewa
'god'; puasa 'fasting'; rasa 'feeling'; arti 'meaning'; sud 'pure' and its
more pedestrian counterpart cuci 'to wash'; raja 'king'; putri 'princess'
3 - Compare, for instance, the large variety of dialects spoken in England, the home
land of English to the lack of dialect variety in North America and, even more typi
cally, Australia.
4 - Cham has the oldest records, going back to the 4th century AD.
5 - In the orthography used here, 'e' stands for a mid-central vowel (also called
'pepet* or 'schwa'; as in the English article 'the') and ' ' stands for a mid front vowel
(as in English 'deck').
K. ALEXANDER ADELAAR
230
and putra 'prince'; isteri 'wife' and suami 'husband'; ketika 'when';
karena 'because'; sudah 'already'.
The inscriptions are in a script that is derived from the Indian Brahmi
script, which is the origin of all Indian and South-east Asian writing sy
stems (including the Burmese, Lao-Thai, Khmer and Javanese ones) inso
far as these are not based on the Latin, Arabic or Chinese scripts. These
scripts consist of main symbols denoting a consonant followed by a de
fault vowel (usually a). Additional symbols (often diacritics) are used for
vowels other than a or to indicate the absence of a vowel.6 Many Brahmi
derived scripts also have a set of reduced consonant symbols that are used
for the formation of consonant clusters.
The two largest South Sumatran inscriptions are directives from the
sovereign to his subjects, one permitting them to enjoy the royal garden,
and the other threatening with a curse all those who conspire against the
sovereign or help others who are conspiring against him. Some later in
scriptions were also found in Java (the Gandasuli inscription of 832 AD)
and, very recently, in the Bay of Manilla (900 AD). The latter two show
that, one millenium ago, speakers of Malay had already been travelling in
other parts of South-east Asia, and their language apparently had already
become a lingua franca.
Other evidence for the existence, nature and role of Malay in times
past are the many Malay loanwords found in other languages. Malay
loanwords are for instance found in Old Javanese texts, some of which
date back to the eighth century AD. They are also found in Tagalog, one
of the main languages in the Philippines which was under heavy Malay
influence in precolonial times but ceased to be so after the arrival of
Europeans in South-east Asia. They are found in Malagasy; as the early
Malagasy must have obtained most of their Malay influence before they
left South-east Asia to go to East Africa in the 7th century AD or there
about, Malay loanwords in Malagasy are a good indication for the enor
mous time-depth behind the use of Malay as a dominant lingua franca
with great cultural impact.
Apart from the Old Malay inscriptions, which are very few indeed,
and the indirect evidence of Malay from loanwords in other languages,
there is in fact no information available on the Malay that was used be
fore the 16th century AD.
Since the 16th century, documentation on Malay is obtained from two
sources, one of which consists of the so-called classical Malay texts, a
collection of chronicals, genealogies, lawbooks and tales written in
'Jawi', an adapted version of the Arabic script. This sort of literature was
enriched by the vocabulary, grammar, rhetoric and philosophy of Arabic
language and Islamic literary traditions (Collins 1996, p. 32) . In con
6 - The system of a default a following consonants was of great advantage to San

skrit. In Sanskrit words, the vowel a occurs more frequently than other vowels; fur
thermore, words as a rule end in a vowel.
trast to Old Malay, it had many Arabic loanwords such as sebab 'reason;
because'; ilmu 'science'; badan 'body'; waktu 'time'; hakim 'judge', and
hukum 'law'; napas 'breath' and nafsu 'passion'\jawab 'answer'; wakil
'representative'; dunia 'world'; kabar 'news'. It was fostered at the
courts of Malay sultans, especially the court of Malacca, which was the
main political and cultural centre of the Malays in the 15th century. Many
works belong to this literature, including the following ones written in the
17th century: the Syair Ken Tambuhan, (a poem relating a romance at the
court of Tanjung Pura), the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals (a partly
mythical account of Malay history), the Hikayat Hang Tuah (the romanti
cised story of Hang Tuah, a Malay culture hero in the period between the
rise of Malacca and its occupation by the Dutch in 1640) and the Taj-us
Salatin (a set of rules for good government, written by a certain Bukhari
in Aceh or Johore in 1603) (Liaw Yock Fang 1975).
After the defeat of Malacca in 1511 by the Portuguese, the Malaccan
court sought refuge to what became the twin-sultanate of Riau (an archi
pelago south of present-day Singapore) and Johore (on the southern tip of
the Malay peninsula). The courts of Riau and Johore thus became the
new cultural centre, but in fact, the defeat of Malacca brought about a
dispersal of centres of Malay literature as many literati and scholars took
refuge in various other places that were not yet in the sphere of influence
of colonial powers (Collins 1996, p. 31). Malay literary works were now
also being created in Aceh, Java, Macassar, the Moluccas, Champa and
elsewhere. The dispersal of Malay culture after the fall of Malacca also
caused Malay to become, more than ever, a vehicular language for the
spread of Islam in insular as well as in mainland South-east Asia. (It has
maintained this function among Muslims in the southern Philippines,
Thailand and Kampuchea).
Although the language of the Classical Malay texts is by no means
uniform and often exhibits influence from the various dialect areas where
they were produced, the texts show various stylistic and linguistic con
ventions that set them off from varieties of spoken Malay. This literary
style was more prestigious than the various spoken dialects, and it be
came a model for more official and standardised forms of Malay in colo
nial times. The style is also reflected in correspondence between some of
the courts and colonial rulers in the 16th century (including letters written
in 1521 and 1522 from the sultan of Ternate, a non-Malay sovereignty in
East Indonesia, to the king of Portugal) (cf. Collins 1996, p. 18).
Another source consists of wordlists, texts and grammars that were
made by early colonialists. The oldest European wordlist was a Malay
Italian list made by Pigafetta in 1522, a member of Magelhaen's expedi
tion to reach the Orient via the Americas. The list was compiled in Ter
nate in the East Indonesia, which shows the importance at the time of
Malay outside its native coasts around the South China Sea. The list
needs some interpretation because the Malay is written in Italian spelling
and shows that the compiler was not entirely familiar with Malay pronun
ciation. It furthermore reflects some dialect influence, most probably
from Brunei Malay. Soon other lists, and also grammars and written
texts, were collected by Westerners, especially by the Dutch, who entered
the arena almost a century after the Portuguese.
In 1603, a Malay-Malagasy-Dutch wordlist with an attached reader of
Malay by Frederick de Houtman was published in Amsterdam, and was
soon followed by other linguistic materials.
Both the Portuguese and the Dutch initially tried to introduce their
own language in Christian communities, and both took recourse to Malay
in the end because they found out that this language was essential for a
better communication. But more so than the Portuguese, the Dutch were
concerned with recording all forms of information and with using Malay
for religious, educational and administrative purposes. The Dutch were
also concerned with converting the Roman Catholic community, which
they inherited from the Portuguese, into a Calvinist one. Somewhat in
contrast with Roman Catholic practice at the time, Calvinism required a
critical understanding of the Scripture in the wider community, and with
it literacy and the availability of readable liturgical texts.
Sociolinguistically, there were several forms of Malay in use at the
time of arrival of the first Europeans. From the comments and the linguis
tic documentation made by them we know that there were at least three
sociolects of Malay (cf. Adelaar and Prentice 1996).
One sociolect was the literary Malay mentioned above.
Another sociolect was the so-called 'low-Malay' that was generally
used in interethnic communication, whether among insular (and peninsu
lar) South-east Asians of different ethnic backgrounds or between these
South-east Asians and Chinese, Indians, Middle-Easterners and Europe
ans. Low Malay or 'Bazaar Malay' was the trade language 'par excel
lence' in insular South-east Asia, but it was also understood in other parts
of mainland South-east Asia and in ports of areas beyond. It was no uni
tary language but probably often differed according to the linguistic
background of its speakers; at any rate, the several forms that have sur
vived the times clearly bear the mark of different linguistic influences. By
and large, however, low Malay sociolects tend to have several grammati
cal features in common. They are characterised by a reduced morphology
and (usually) a simplified phonology. They often use orang 'human be
ing' to indicate plural in pronouns (as can still be seen in Sri Lanka Ma
lay, e.g. lu 'you (singular)' vs. lurang [< *lu orang] 'you (plural)'; de
'she; he' vs. derang [< *de orang] 'they'; Adelaar 1991, p. 32). Posses
sive constructions are made with the linker punya, and the 'possessor'
precedes the 'possessed' whereas literary Malay forms possessive
constructions by simply juxtaposing the 'possessor' to the 'possessed',
e.g. literary Malay bapak saya vs. 'low' Malay saya punya bapa 'my
father' (where bapak/bapa means 'father' and saya means '1st person
singular'). Low Malay uses very few prepositions, e.g. Jakarta Malay
Low Malay uses very few prepositions, e.g. Jakarta Malay simply uses
(s)am where literary Malay distinguishes between untuk 'for',pada 'to',
bagi 'for' and akan 'to; concerning'. Where literary Malay uses verbal
morphology (prefixes and suffixes), low Malay makes frequent use of
auxiliaries, e.g. from jatuh 'to fall', literary Malay derives men-jatuh-kan
'to drop'; and from bersih 'clean', it derives mem-bersih-kan 'to clean';
compare this with low Malay kasijatu 'to drop' and bikin bersi 'to clean'
(the original meanings of kasi and bikin are 'to give' and 'to make' re
spectively).
Apart from a 'high' literary variant and a 'low' variant for trade and
other forms of interethnic communication, there must also have been a
third category of sociolect, the vernaculars. We infer this from the im
pressive variety of Malay vernaculars that exist today, which cannot be
explained alone by dialect divergence in the last five centuries, although
this divergence no doubt also added to the present-day variety. These
vernaculars were different from the low Malay variants in that they were
the dialects of traditional Malay communities and did not show the same
amount of interference from other languages as did low Malay.
One clear manifestation of the existence, side-by-side, of high and low
varieties of Malay was a fierce dispute among the Dutch as to which so
ciolect should be used for a Malay bible translation. One of the important
strongholds of Dutch colonial power in the 17th century was Ambon Is
land and its surroundings. Ambon had become the centre of the spice
trade, which the Dutch East India Company endeavoured to monopolise
entirely. Under the East India Company, Ambon had become a big multi
ethnic city with a Christian population using a form of low Malay as lin
gua franca. The East India Company, in its effort to stamp out the last
vestiges of Catholicism left behind by the Portuguese, applied an inten
sive program combining literacy and religious education. A translation of
the bible became expedient, but this immediately raised the question as to
whether high or low Malay should be used. Low Malay was understood
by most and would guarantee a much more direct transfer of the biblical
message. High Malay, on the other hand, was the literary language and
had more prestige. Some therefore considered it more suited for convey
ing this message. The first position was defended rather passionately by
the historian Valentyn.7 In the end, the Dutch administrators decided in
favour of the high Malay version, which then turned out to be for a large
part incomprehensible to its target group who were used to neither the
high Malay language register nor the artificial character of the translation.
Collins emphasises the great impact of European contact in the 16th

and 17th century on Malay. After the defeat of Malacca by the Portu
guese, Malay was no longer linked to a single dominant centre of cultural
7 - Valentyn also had a personal interest in the low Malay bible which, as it turned
out, was translated by his wife.
authority, and literature was now produced at several centres. With the ar
rival of Europeans, Malay also became the language of Christianity, es
pecially in east Indonesia. As such it was written in Latin script. It bor
rowed many loanwords from Portuguese and (later) Dutch. The Dutch,
making use of printing, had a considerable influence on Malay literacy
through their spread of liturgical literature (Collins 1996, p. 32-33). Por
tuguese loanwords are, among many others, sepatu 'shoe'; topi 'hat';
nyonya 'Madam, Mrs.'; tempo 'time'; keju 'cheese'; ment ga 'butter',
serdadu '(foreign) soldier'; kapitan 'head, chief, captain'; algojo 'prison'.
Loanwords from Dutch that entered Malay at an early stage are among
others duit 'money'; sekoci 'boat, sloop'; hui 'prison'; kakus 'toilet';
permisi 'permission (to take leave)'; jel k 'ugly'; snapan 'gun'; setrika
'to iron'; bak 'container'; rak 'shelf.
The 18th century did not bring any significant change in the develop
ment of Malay. In the 19th century, the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 di
vided the Malay world in two. The British now took control of the Malay
peninsula and gave up their claims in Sumatra and Java, whereas the
Dutch gave up their claim on Malacca and remained in control in insular
South-east Asia (insofar as the islands were not under Spanish or Portu
guese colonial rule). The only deviation from this principle was the occu
pation, in the 19th century, of North Borneo by the British (or rather, by
British subjects eventually obtaining the backing of their government).
Both the British and the Dutch used Malay as a tool of centralisation
and modernisation. They made use of each other's scholarly publications
in creating (or inventing ) a standard version of Malay (Collins 1996, p.
59).
This standardised Malay was grafted on the Classical Malay literary
language of the courts of Riau and Johore. It also became known as
Riau-Johore Malay , and it is often misunderstood to have originated
from the vernacular Malay spoken in Riau and/or Johore. However, stan
dard Malay originally derives from the literary language of the Riau
Johore courts. The latter may to a minor extent have been influenced by
the regional dialects in Riau and Johore, but it was essentially a continua
tion of the literary language of the court of Malacca. The latter, in turn,
was the continuation of a literary tradition that cannot be retraced but
possibly goes back as far as the court language of Srivijaya in South Su
matra.
Further developments of Malay in the Dutch East Indies
Malay was used and promoted in almost all domains of public life (colo
nial administration, education, religion, trade, jurisdiction), although
Dutch would still be the key to positions of power and to higher educa
tion.
Malay newspapers first appeared in Surabaya (East Java) in 1856, and

outside Indonesia, in Sri Lanka in 1869. Later, Indonesian newspapers
were printed in Java and Medan (Sumatra). The Malay press represented
a new literary style which was also used in novels and various other pub
lications. It used low Malay, which was freer and more colloquial than
the standardised language promoted by the Dutch East Indian govern
ment. Since the 1920's, the style became also known as Chinese
Malay , because of the large Chinese involvement, but this term is inac
curate and does not acknowledge that Eurasians and other Indonesians
also contributed to it.
During the early nineteen hundreds, the prescriptive linguistic works
of Ch. A. van Ophuysen, in particular, had a major influence on the stan
dardisation of Malay in Indonesia. An important but often neglected con
tribution to the development of Malay in the 19th century are the works
of Raja Ali Haji, a prince of Buginese descent at the Riau court. He wrote
a grammar and dictionary of Malay and was the main informant for a Ma
lay-Dutch dictionary, which became a standard reference work at the time
(Wall 1877-97). His Malay prose and poetry is often seen as a transitional
stage between classical and modern Malay literature.
On the Malay peninsula, the literary work of the Malay author Abdul
lah ibn Abdulkadir al-Munshi also had an influence on the standardisa
tion of Malay (in Malaya as well as in the Dutch East Indies) and is
equally considered as a transition between Classical Malay and modern
Malay literature.
The policy of the Dutch colonial government to promote Malay was
partly motivated by a concern that the number of Indonesians speaking
Dutch should remain low. Although the government's policy regarding
the use of Malay and Dutch varied throughout the 19th and first half of
the 20th century, the promotion of Malay was in a way a hidden agenda
to divert Indonesians from learning Dutch, which remained the key to po
sitions of power and critical information. Possibilities for learning it re
mained limited.
In the 20th century, the Dutch East Indian government also became
concerned about the popularity of the Indonesian press. It disapproved of
its non-standard language and found its contents sometimes subversive.
The government's efforts to standardise Malay culminated in the founda
tion, in 1908, of a language planning bureau later called Balai Pustaka
('Literature Bureau'). This institute also published literary works in Ma
lay as well as in other Indonesian languages. Through its preference for
Sumatran copy-editors, the Malay it propagated underwent influence
from Minangkabau (which linguistically speaking is almost a dialect of
Malay). The large production of these works, which were subsidised, was
also a way to counteract the popularity of the Indonesian press.
The first half of the 20th century was a time of great economic and
technological progress in Indonesia, especially in Java. It also saw the
emergence of Indonesian nationalism, which was articulated most clearly

in 1928 when a group of young nationalists from among the Indonesian
elite held a congress and took an oath of allegiance, the Sumpah Pemuda
(or 'Oath of Young [Nationalists]') to One State, One People and One
Language. This language was Malay, which from then on was called In
donesian (Alisjahbana 1976, p. 39). Dutch and Javanese had also been
considered as fiiture national languages, but eventually Malay was chosen
as it was a widely understood lingua franca. Dutch was associated with
colonialism and was not understood widely enough, as it had been rather
out of reach for most Indonesians. Javanese was associated with the in
terests of a major ethnic group. It was moreover much more difficult than
Malay, and its structure reflected too much the stratified character of
Javanese society.
The form of Malay that the nationalists had in mind and that would
eventually become the national language of an independent Indonesia
was the Balai Pustaka standard version, and not the language of the Indo
nesian press and publishers. (The latter disappeared as a literary style af
ter Independence, although various forms of low Malay survive and keep
influencing Indonesian, see below).
Despite the good intentions and literary endeavours of the nationalists,
the Indonesian language was not yet adapted to the modern, western-style
society urban Indonesia was changing into; it could not yet replace Dutch
in such domains as those of the sciences and higher administration.
It was only during the Japanese occupation (1942-45) that great ef
forts were made to adapt Indonesian to the level where it could fill the
domains that had hitherto been reserved to Dutch. When the Japanese as
sumed power in Indonesia, they immediately abolished Dutch. Although
the Japanese eventually wanted to replace Dutch by Japanese,8 they first
replaced it by Indonesian which was from then on used intensively in the
media and at all levels of education and administration. The Japanese also
created a Commission on the Indonesian Language ('Komisi Bahasa In
donesia') which had the task to compose a normative grammar and to
create modern terminology. It was through the Japanese occupation,
which was somehow a shock therapy in the implementation of Indone
sian, that the use of this language gained the necessary momentum to be
come the national language. This became a reality at last at the time of
Independence (August 17, 1945; Alisjahbana 1976, p. 40-42).
The developments affecting Indonesian did by no means stop or di

minish after Independence, and the language has been in constant change
ever since. The main factors influencing modern Indonesian are the fol
lowing:
Indonesian in its further adaptation to the rapidly changing modern
times has been borrowing a large number of loanwords from English.
8 - Cf. Alisjahbana (1976, p. 40).
English, which was already a prestige language in colonial times, has

now taken over from Dutch as the most prestigious foreign language and
as a source for borrowing. As Dutch had done before, English not only
influenced the vocabulary of Indonesian but also its idiom and sometimes
even its syntax. English has not only become the main source of terms for
new concepts: in many cases it is also replacing already existing terms,
whether authentically Malay or from Dutch.
In a country where half of the population lives on Java, Javanese has
become another major source of loanwords in Indonesia. Their borrowing
is usually unplanned (Moeliono 1989), and the loanwords in question of
ten denote emotions or behaviour, such as (me)ngebut 'to drive at exces
sive speed'; gereged-en 'tense from restraining pent-up emotions'; r w l
'hard to please'. They also denote typically Javanese concepts, e.g. pas
rah 'to submit to one's fate'; t kad 'determined to do something despite
the consequences'. Finally, they also include interjections and function
words such as ayo 'come on!'; kok 'why? how come? (modal word ex
pressing surprise)'; masak ' how can it be! (modal word expressing disbe
lief or impossibility)'. There is also some borrowing from Sundanese and
other regional languages, but much less so.
The influence of 'Jakartan Indonesian' takes a very special position.
This dialect should not be confused with Jakarta Malay ('Melayu
Betawi') which is the original low Malay dialect of Jakarta. Jakarta
Indonesian is an urbanised substandard form of Indonesian which
exhibits some of the particularities of Jakarta Malay (cf. Grijns 1991,
18ff). It is becoming a prestige dialect among the urban elite in Jakarta
and elsewhere in Indonesia. It has a strong influence on standard
Indonesian, and it often serves as an informal counterpart to this sociolect
which is generally perceived as officialese . It is increasingly being
used in popular literature, comics, popular songs and performing arts
(Adelaar and Prentice 1996, p. 678). Jakartan Indonesian influence is
manifested in many ways, among others (1) in the predilection for the use
of the suffix -in (instead of the standard suffixes -kan and -/); (2) in the
use of e instead of a in the last syllable of certain words, such cepet
'quick' instead of cepat, or diem 'to be quiet' instead of diam; (3) in the
pronunciation of - instead of -a or -ah, e.g. lame 'long time' instead of
lama, kite 'we (or I)' instead of kita 'we', or mate 'eye' instead of mata;
(4) in the deletion of initial s in some important function words: ud
'already' instead of sudah, aj 'only' instead of saja.
There are, however, also other low and regional Malay varieties that
are sometimes mixed with Indonesian (especially in spoken language),
but these varieties do not have the same appeal as Jakartanese Indonesian.
One noticeable case of interference from another low Malay variant (used
in Java) is the speech of the former president of Indonesia, Mr. Suharto,
which, among others, is characterised by the frequent use of the suffix
-ken (instead of standard -kan and -/ and Jakarta Indonesian -in).
Language planning is nowadays in the hands of the Center for Lan

guage Building and Development ('Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan
Bahasa'). This center is concerned with the lexical growth of Indonesian
(especially in the creation of specialised terminologies) and has also is
sued a standard grammar and dictionary of Indonesian. It also publishes
linguistic and literary data on languages other than Indonesian in Indone
sia. New terms have been created on the basis of Sanskrit roots, and,
more recently, on the basis of archaic Malay vocabulary. The activities of
the Center have had a great effect on the further growth of Indonesian.
Nevertheless, not every new term or other language change recom
mended by the Center has found acceptance among the speakers of Indo
nesian, and the Center has often been criticised for being too prescriptive
and out of touch with developments in spoken Indonesian. Some consider
this institute too much of a continuation of the colonial language bureau
Balai Pustaka and its puristic activities.
The Indonesian and Malaysian governments through their language
planning centres have co-operated in an effort to unify their standard
forms of Malay. A successful achievement in this respect was the intro
duction, in 1972, of a unified spelling, the Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan
('Perfected Spelling'). Efforts to unify the vocabularies of both national
languages have so far been less successful. By and large, the Indonesian
Center for Language Building and Development keeps using Sanskrit and
archaic Malay vocabulary (sometimes English) as a source for neolo
gisms, whereas the Malaysian Language and Literature Council (see be
low) prefers Arabic and English vocabulary for this purpose. Further
more, Indonesian and Malaysian still have different vocabularies which
they have inherited from their respective colonial pasts. Examples of this
are the following pairs or words, of which the Indonesian member is bor
rowed from Dutch and the Malaysian member is borrowed from English:
Ind. bis, Mis. bas 'bus'; Ind. sep da (< Dutch/French v locip de), Mis.
baisikal 'bicycle'; Ind. klakson, tuter, Mis. hon 'car horn'; Ind. klub, Mis.
kelab 'club'; Ind. pos, Mis. m l 'mail'; Ind. kantor, Mis. opis 'office';
Ind. l s, Mis. tusyen 'tuition'; Ind. mesin, Mis. injin 'engine'. (Obviously,
Dutch and English loanwords do not always occur in such pairs: there are
also many Dutch loanwords in Indonesian for which Malaysian has an
inherited counterpart, and vice-versa, there are many English loanwords
in Malaysian Malay for which Indonesian has an inherited equivalent).
Further developments of Malay in the Malay peninsula

The Malay peninsula gradually came under British rule between 1786
and 1919. Under the British, immigration from China and India increased
to the extent that at the end of the colonial period Malays had become
only 41% of the population and were outnumbered by the Chinese (44%).
Malays were mainly agriculturists and lived outside the cities. Secular
education in Malay remained a neglected area (Malay secondary schools
were only established after WWII). In the 20th century, the Malay
schools curriculum was improved considerably through the influence of
the education officers and imminent Malay scholars RJ. Wilkinson and
R.O. Winstedt. The first teacher training college was founded in Singa
pore in 1876. However, it was at the Sultan Idris Teachers College in
Tanjung Malim (opened in 1922) that a unified curriculum for teacher
training in the whole peninsula was prepared by Winstedt. In 1924, Sul
tan Idris Teachers College incorporated the 'Translation Bureau'. This
Bureau was concerned with the development of educational publications,
the publication of novels, the provision of translations for the govern
ment, and the training of translators. Its first translator was Zainal Abidin
bin Ahmad (also known as Za'ba), who became a prominent Malay lin
guist. The activities of these combined institutes had a major impact on
the standardisation of Malay on the Malay peninsula.
Before WWII, a new Malay intellectual elite arose which was well
aware of the economical and educational disadvantages of their people as
compared to some other groups in the country. After the war they
founded the United Malays National Organisation (in 1946) which later
formed a coalition with Chinese and Indian ethnic parties and obtained
independence in 1957. Malay was accepted as a future national and offi
cial language by all three coalition members. An educational committee
that had been created the previous year brought out the Razak Report
(named after its chairman Abdul Razak) recommending Malay as the na
tional language and as a medium of instruction in all primary and secon
dary schools. The report became a blueprint for further language policy.
It also recommended the creation of a Language Institute, leading to the
establishment of the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka ('Language and Litera
ture Council') in 1959. The Malayan Constitution of 1957 stated that the
national language should be Malay. In 1967, a politically troubled year in
Malaysia, a National Language Act determined that Malay would also be
the only official language of the country. Malay was renamed Bahasa
Malaysia ('the Malaysian language') in an effort to make non-Malays
more willing to identify with it (the name was recently changed back into
Bahasa Melayu ['the Malay language']). Malay became the official lan
guage in Sabah in 1973 and in Sarawak in 1985.
On the whole, the implementation of Malay as a national language in
Malaysia has been much more difficult than in Indonesia. In the first
place, although 80% of the population knew Malay, the national language
was a standard form of Malay that hardly anyone was familiar with. Ma
lays spoke a variety of vernacular dialects which were often very differ
ent from standard Malay, and the Chinese and Indians only knew a form
of low Malay. Furthermore, in trying to establish itself as the national
language, Malay has had to compete with English. English not only con
trolled the domains of law, science and technology, industry, business
and the media, but in contrast to other colonial languages, it is also a
world language. It is constantly gaining in importance and has probably

the largest number of second language speakers in the world. Finally,
whereas nationalist Malays often blame the government for laxness in the
implementation of Malay and resent the importance of English in public
life, non-Malays sometimes feel that the requirement of Malay in educa
tion and for jobs in the government and elsewhere is a form of discrimi
nation. They also resent the preferential treatment obtained by Malays in
higher education and in certain jobs where they are under-represented
(Adelaar 1996a).
Malay in Singapore and Brunei

When Singapore separated from Malaysia9 and became an independent
state in 1965, Malay10 remained the national language. However, four
languages obtained the status of official language in Singapore: English,
Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. The majority of the Singaporeans is Chi
nese, and Malay is the mother tongue of only 15% of the total population.
English, Mandarin and Hokkien Chinese are therefore practically far
more important. A form of low Malay was widely used in the past but is
now being replaced by Singaporean English (Adelaar and Prentice 1996,
p. 677).
Malay (in its Malaysian standard version) is also the official language
of Brunei Darussalam, although English and especially Brunei Malay (the
main vernacular Malay dialect) are more important. Brunei Malay has
become a lingua franca among most Bruneians. As a marker of national
solidarity it is gaining in importance and it is expanding at the cost of
standard Malay (Martin 1996, p. 36).
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Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies

The University of Melbourne

Short History of The Malay Language by A. Adelaar

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MALAY: A SHORT HISTORY

Author(s): K. ALEXANDER ADELAAR

MALAY: A SHORT HISTORY*

Malay, ornesia,Indonesian, as itlanguage

Language Variety in South-East Asia and the Pacific

OM, n.s. XIX (LXXX), 2, 2000

of which is represented by several language members in the area. The fol

Austronesian Languages: Homeland and Classification

tronesian languages have large numbers of native speakers, such as Java

The Languages of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei

6 - The system of a default a following consonants was of great advantage to San

Collins emphasises the great impact of European contact in the 16th

Further developments of Malay in the Dutch East Indies

Malay newspapers first appeared in Surabaya (East Java) in 1856, and

emergence of Indonesian nationalism, which was articulated most clearly

The developments affecting Indonesian did by no means stop or di

8 - Cf. Alisjahbana (1976, p. 40).

English, which was already a prestige language in colonial times, has

Language planning is nowadays in the hands of the Center for Lan

Further developments of Malay in the Malay peninsula

world language. It is constantly gaining in importance and has probably

Malay in Singapore and Brunei

9 - At the time still called 'Malaya'.

Adelaar 1985), Pacific Linguistics Series C

Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Af

Melbourne Institute of Asian Languages and Societies

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