Malay may refer to:
Malay may refer to:
Malay is an Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. It is also spoken in East Timor and southern part of Thailand. Altogether, it is spoken by 290 million people across Maritime Southeast Asia.
Malays are an Austronesian ethnoreligious group native to eastern Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula and coastal Borneo, as well as the smaller islands that lie between these locations. These locations are today part of the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia, the southern part of Thailand, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam.
Nusantara is the Indonesian name for the region spanning the Indonesian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula. It is an Old Javanese term that literally means "outer islands". In Indonesia, it is generally taken to mean the Indonesian Archipelago. Outside of Indonesia, the term has been adopted to refer to the Malay Archipelago.
In addition to its classical and modern literary form, Malay had various regional dialects established after the rise of the Srivijaya empire in Sumatra, Indonesia. Also, Malay spread through interethnic contact and trade across the south East Asia Archipelago as far as the Philippines. That contact resulted in a lingua franca that was called Bazaar Malay or low Malay and in Malay Melayu Pasar. It is generally believed that Bazaar Malay was a pidgin, influenced by contact among Malay, Hokkien, Portuguese, and Dutch traders.
Malaysian Malay or Malaysian —endonymically within Malaysia as Standard Malay or simply Malay — is a standardized form of the Malay language used in Malaysia and also used in Brunei Darussalam and Singapore. Malaysian Malay is standardized from the Johor–Riau dialect of Malay, particularly a branch spoken in the state of Johor south of the Malay Peninsula. It is spoken by much of the Malaysian population, although most learn a vernacular Malay dialect or another native language first.
Malay was first used in the first millennia known as Old Malay, a part of the Austronesian language family. Over a period of two millennia, Malay has undergone various stages of development that derived from different layers of foreign influences through international trade, religious expansion, colonisation and developments of new socio-political trends. The oldest form of Malay is descended from the Proto-Malayo-Polynesian language spoken by the earliest Austronesian settlers in Southeast Asia. This form would later evolve into Old Malay when Indian cultures and religions began penetrating the region, most probably using the Kawi and Rencong scripts, some linguistic researchers say. Old Malay contained some terms that exist today, but are unintelligible to modern speakers, while the modern language is already largely recognisable in written Classical Malay of 1303 CE.
The term Proto-Malay, primeval Malays, proto-Hesperonesians, first-wave Hesperonesians or primeval Hesperonesians, which translates to Melayu Asli or Melayu Purba or Melayu Tua, refers to Austronesian speakers who moved from mainland Asia, to the Malay Peninsula and Malay Archipelago in a long series of migrations between 2500 and 1500 BCE, before that of the Deutero-Malays about a thousand years later. The Proto-Malays are descendants of the first humans living in Southeast Asia, and are "ancestral" for humans in east Asia and the Americas.
Greater Indonesia was an irredentist political concept that sought to bring the so-called Malay race together, by uniting the territories of the Dutch East Indies with British Malaya and British Borneo. It was espoused by students and graduates of Sultan Idris Training College for Malay Teachers in the late 1920s, and individuals from Sumatra and Java, including Mohammad Natsir and Sukarno, on 28 September 1950. Indonesia Raya was adopted as the name of what later became the Indonesian national anthem in 1924.
The Malayic languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The two most prominent members of this branch are Indonesian and Malay. Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia and has evolved as a standardized form of Malay with distinct influences from local languages and historical factors. Malay, in its various forms, is recognized as a national language in Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore. The Malayic branch also includes local languages spoken by ethnic Malays, further several languages spoken by various other ethnic groups of Sumatra, Indonesia and Borneo even as far as Urak Lawoi in the southwestern coast of Thailand.
Malays may refer to:
The concept of a Malay race was originally proposed by the German physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), and classified as a brown race. Malay is a loose term used in the late 19th century and early 20th century to describe the Austronesian peoples.
Malaysian Malays are Malaysians of Malay ethnicity whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in the Malay world. According to the 2023 population estimate, with a total population of 17.6 million, Malaysian Malays form 57.9% of Malaysia's demographics, the largest ethnic group in the country. They can be broadly classified into two main categories; Anak Jati and Anak Dagang.
Malay Indonesians are ethnic Malays living throughout Indonesia. They are one of the indigenous peoples of the country. Indonesian, the national language of Indonesia, is a standardized form of Riau Malay. There were numerous kingdoms associated with the Indonesian Malays along with other ethnicities in what is now Indonesia, mainly on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. These included Srivijaya, the Melayu Kingdom, Dharmasraya, the Sultanate of Deli, the Sultanate of Siak Sri Indrapura, the Riau-Lingga Sultanate, the Sultanate of Bulungan, Pontianak Sultanate, and the Sultanate of Sambas. The 2010 census states that there are 8 million Malays in Indonesia; this number comes from the classification of Malays in East Sumatra and the coast of Kalimantan which is recognized by the Indonesian government. This classification is different from the Malaysia and Singapore census which includes all ethnic Muslims from the Indonesian archipelago as Malays.
Kedahan Malays or commonly known as Orang Utara ('Northerners'), are a sub-group of Malays native to northern Malay Peninsula in areas of both current and historical area of Kedah. They are among the oldest ethnic groups in the Malay peninsula with a history dating back 2,800 years as proven by the discovery of sites in Bujang Valley and historical documents from India, China and Arabia. Kedahan Malays are one of the largest Malay sub-groups in Malaysia, comprising at least 15% of the total Malaysian Malay population including those with Kedahan ancestry.
Malayisation or Malayization is a process of assimilation and acculturation, that involves acquisition or imposition of elements of Malay culture, in particular, Islam and the Malay language, as experienced by non-Malay populations of territories fully controlled or partially influenced by historical Malay sultanates and modern Malay-speaking countries. It is often described as a process of civilisational expansion, drawing a wide range of indigenous peoples into the Muslim, Malay-speaking polities of Maritime Southeast Asia. Examples of Malayisation have occurred throughout Asia including in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka.
The Malay world or Malay realm is a concept or an expression that has been used by different authors and groups over time to denote several different notions, derived from varied interpretations of 'Malay' either as an ethnic group, as a racial category, as a linguistic group or as a cultural group. The use of the term Malay in much of the conceptualisation is largely based on the prevalent Malay cultural influence, manifested in particular through the spread of the Malay language in Southeast Asia as observed by different colonial powers during the Age of Discovery and spread of Islam. The term remains highly controversial in Indonesia and outside the Malay-speaking areas, because it is considered politically charged and irredentist rather than purely cultural.
Malay spoken by a minority of Filipinos, particularly in the Palawan, Sulu Archipelago and parts of Mindanao, mostly in the form of trade and creole languages, such as Sabah Malay.
Riau Malays are a sub-group of Malays native to Riau and Riau Islands province on the eastern region of Sumatra. Today they only make up 29% of Riau Island population while in Riau's they still form a plurality of the population at around 45%. Riau Malays especially coastal Riau and Riau Islands share the same or similar cultural, historical and linguistic background with Johorean and Singaporean Malays due to its common origin starting from Malacca in the 15th century to as recently as Johor Empire in the 18th century.
Malays played a significant role in pre-Hispanic Philippine history. Malay involvement in Philippine history goes back to the Classical Era with the establishment of Rajahnates as well as the Islamic era, in which various sultanates and Islamic states were formed in Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago, and around Manila.
Malay has a long history as a lingua franca in the Malay Archipelago which currently includes Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore, East Timor, and the southern part of Thailand. This geographical variation, which then spread widely even to South Africa, finally led to the formation of a Malay language cluster which spread and had differences due to geographical conditions. The following is a list of Malay dialects and varieties summarized in one article.