A Typology of the Spread of Malay

Abstract

A great deal has been said and researched on the role of Malay, as the lingua franca in commercial areas of insular Southeast Asia, and as the national language of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei Darussalam. Its present-day status reflects its rise for centuries as a language of governance of Malay kingdoms in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatera, Borneo, and in the Moluccas. The presence of Malay in mainland Southeast Asia today extends its insular spread via the Malay Peninsula. These Malay kingdoms played as centres of dispersal of the use of Malay as the language was unrivalled in its sociolinguistic status in the whole of the Malay Archipelago, not just as the language of governance in those kingdoms, but also the language of diplomacy between them and those others within the archipelago itself, and even between those in the latter group. The widespread use of Malay in ancient times has been credited by historians to the hegemony of the Srivijaya Malay-speaking empire which lasted from the seventh to the 14th century C.E. Today the Malay language is known to have speakers of Malay outside of the archipelago, such as in Australia inclusive of the Christmas Islands and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean (Asmah 2006, 2008), the Holy Land of Mecca and Medina (Asmah et al. 2015), England, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. Away from the Malay world, Malay speech communities have taken shape in these places; small they may be, but they are ‘alive,’ as a home language of immigrant Malay native speakers who have settled in these places, as products of Malay world migration.