Malay is the official language of Malaysia and Brunei and also the national language of Singapore. The language is also known as Bahasa Malaysia although called Bahasa Melayu by the Constitution.
The origin of the Malay language has many hypotheses; one of these is that it came from the Sumatra Island.
Malay belongs to the Austronesian family of languages, which includes languages from Southeast Asian and the Pacific Ocean. The Malay language shares many similarities with the Javanese, Chamorro, Palauan and the Acehnese languages. Although being mutually inexplicable, the similarities of each language are quite prominent.
The National Language Act 1967, which introduced the term Bahasa Malaysia, was in use until the 1990s. Post 1990, most academicians and government officials went back to Bahasa Melayu used in the Malay version, which according to Article 152 of the Federal Constitution, is the official language of Malaysia.
During the 1970’s, Bahasa Kebangsaan was also used at one point in time. However, today Malaysian prefers their national language to be identified as Bahasa Malaysia, once again.
The Malay language is derived from the Latin alphabet known as Rumi, although Jawi, a modified Arabic Script, was already in existence. Rumi is widely used in Malaysia and Singapore whereas Indonesian has a different formal orthography using the Latin script. Efforts are being currently undertaken to safeguard the Jawi script and revitalize its use among the Malays in Malaysia, where they have an option of answering the questions in Jawi script. However, the Latin alphabet holds more dominance and is still the most commonly used script in Malaysia, for both official and non-official purposes.
Traditionally, the Malay language has been written using a variety of scripts. Before the use of the Arabic script, Malay was written using the Kawi, Pallava and Rencong script, which is evident from several stone inscriptions in the region.
From the period of the Pasai Kingdom and throughout the golden age of the Sultanate of Malacca, the Pallawa and the Rencong scripts were replaced by Jawi. In the 17th century, during the Dutch and British influence, the Rumi script gradually replaced the Jawi script.
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