The Family of Bahasa Malaysia in Maps

The story of Bahasa Malaysia in maps. Altogether there are 19 human language families on planet earth :

Can you see the Austronesian language family among the list...? There are different versions on how to classify the languages further. The Malaysian version is dividing the Austronesian family into four divisions : Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The Malay language is part of the largest divison, Indonesia.

Oh yes, this is entirely different from the Formosan and Malayo-Polynesian classificiation presented in major reference books. It's not my job to dispute, I am only sticking to the theme of this website by telling the story from the side of Malaysia.

Examples of the other members in the Austronesian stock are: Hawaiian, Fijian, Malagasy ( Madagascar ), Tagalog ( Philipines ) and Tetum ( East Timor) - all being the official languages in their respective countries. Observing the Austronesian regions helps me to meet the big family to which Bahasa Malaysia belongs.

Yellow colour area shows where majority of Austronesian languages are spoken

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Speakers of 1,268 Austronesian languages are located mostly on southern islands. No wonder, the name Austronesian comes from Latin auster "south wind" plus Greek nêsos "island"!

Javanese has the largest number of native speakers in the Austronesian stock, 70 million followed by Malay 40 million. However if you add this figure to another 125 million non-native speakers, this makes Malay one of the most widely spoken world languages after Mandarin, English, Hindustani, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Bengali and Portugese.

When you narrow down to regions where native speakers of Malay are concentrated, you come to areas where Malay is called Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu or, Bahasa Malaysia - Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, South Thailand, Sumatera, Kalimantan and islands surrounding these areas especially Riau and Bangka.

South-east Asia family of Bahasa Malaysia in maps "Core Malay Region"

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Theory of a Malay Language Core Area

I had a good time laughing at the various theories on how Malay language was diffused into other parts of South-east Asia. Some folks said Malay language migrated from Taiwan, some said it was from Yunnan or New Guinea and one guy even proposed Borneo!

But here I would like to bring up a theory about the existence a core Malay language area encompassing locations of early Malay kingdoms, for several hundred years. This core was expanded by the Malacca Sultanate, influxes of Sumatran soldiers and miners, Bugis and other Moslem Austronesian groups.

Theory of Core Malay Region

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