MALAY LANGUAGE

Malay is a Malayic language spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and Thailand. The total number of speakers of Standard Malay is about 18 million. There are also about 170 million people who speak Indonesian, which is a form of Malay.  The history of the Malay language can be divided into five periods: Old Malay, the Transitional Period, the Malacca Period (Classical Malay), Late Modern Malay and modern Malay. It is not clear that Old Malay was actually the ancestor of Classical Malay, but this is thought to be quite possible.   

       Malay language, member of the Western, or Indonesian, branch of the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) language family, spoken as a native language by more than 33,000,000 persons .Rumi and Jawi are co-official in Brunei only. Names of institutions and organisations have to use Jawi and Rumi (Latin) scripts. Jawi is used fully in schools, especially the Religious School, Sekolah Agama, which is compulsory during the afternoon for Muslim students aged from around 6–7 up to 12–14.

                   Latin alphabet for Malay (Tulisan Rumi)

A a	B b	C c	D d	E e	F f	G g	H h	I i
e	bi	si	di	i	ef	ji	hec	ai
J j	K k	L l	M m	N n	O o	P p	Q q	R r
je	ke	el	em	en	ou	pi	kiu	ar
S s	T t	U u	V v	W w	X x	Y y	Z z
es	ti	yu	vi	dabel yu	eks	wai	zed