Malay

Malay ( UK: /məˈleɪ/ mə-LAY; endonym: Bahasa Melayu, Jawi script: بهاس ملايو) is an Austronesian language native to several islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula on mainland Asia. The language is an official language of Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, where the standardised variety is known as Indonesian; Indonesian is also one of the working languages of Timor-Leste. Malay is the ethnic language of Malays in Sumatra, Borneo and surrounding islands in Indonesia, southeast Philippines, southern Thailand, and the Southern Province of Sri Lanka. Altogether, it is spoken as a first language by about 80 million people and as a first or second language by close to 300 million.

The language is pluricentric and a macrolanguage, i.e., a group of mutually intelligible speech varieties, or dialect continuum, that have no traditional name in common, and which may be considered distinct languages by their speakers. Several varieties of it are standardised as the national language (bahasa kebangsaan or bahasa nasional) of several nation states with various official names: in Malaysia, it is designated as either Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language") or in some instances, Bahasa Malaysia ("Malaysian language"); in Singapore and Brunei, it is called Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language") where it in the latter country refers to a formal standard variety set apart from its own vernacular dialect; in Indonesia, an autonomous normative variety called Bahasa Indonesia ("Indonesian language") is designated the bahasa persatuan/pemersatu ("unifying language" or lingua franca) whereas the term "Malay" (bahasa Melayu) refers to vernacular varieties of Malay indigenous to areas of Central to Southern Sumatra and West Kalimantan as the ethnic languages of Malay in Indonesia.