So, you’ve decided to learn Malay. What an incredible decision! Malay is one of the great languages of Southeast Asia, mutually comprehensible with one of the biggest languages of the region, Indonesian, and related to many other Austronesian languages, especially another popular one, Tagalog!
Whether you’re living in Malaysia, Brunei, or Singapore, or looking to make new friends from countries like these, you’ll be glad you dedicated the time and energy to learning Malay, and we’re glad you’re considering it too! So let’s get you started on how to master Malay!
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Overview Of The Malay Language
Austronesian Languages
While less often studied than Indo-European languages, whose members are spread across the Eurasian landmass from India to Britain, there are many members of the Austronesian language family to which Malay belongs. Some of these include small languages which are minorities in the countries to which they are Indigenous, like Hawai’ian in the United States, as well as large official languages like Malagasy in Madagascar.
The Austronesian languages spread across the Pacific Ocean by ancient Austronesian people traveling by boat, long before European empires came to these regions. Their Urheimat, or place of ultimate origin, is held to be the island once known as Formosa by Europeans, and as Taiwan by the Chinese (and most of the world today). The small remains of the local languages in Taiwan are some of the most diverse in the family.
Malay: A Regional Language Or A World Language?
The Malaya Straits and the surrounding region are populated by many different people who speak different languages and practice different religions. But for centuries, Malay has served as an official language for important regional states like the Malacca Sultanate and the Johor Sultanate, as well as a lingua franca, thanks to trade. The modern states of Malaysia and Brunei continue to look to this classical period for their own standard language, which also has secondary official status in Singapore. Indonesian, which traces its origins to classical Malay, is a separate standard language that is nonetheless largely mutually intelligible with modern Malay.
And in other countries such as East Timor and Thailand local varieties are also spoken. With millions of speakers and growing, Malay is a great choice for a modern language to learn that is only growing in importance in the world!
What Makes Malay Special?
Like most modern languages, Malay’s current form has been shaped by interaction with many cultures. As a historical trade language of a very diverse region, Malay is special in terms of its incorporation of vocabulary from languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Tamil, English, and Chinese. Like Malaysia itself, the modern Malay language is a rich cultural tapestry, well worth learning more about for any citizen of the world!
But many may wonder: Is Malay hard to learn? If you’ve never studied it before, the idea of learning Malay might seem intimidating to you. There are many things that make Malay an especially easy language to learn, but it has its own challenges as well!
If you’ve already studied Chinese or a language of Southeast Asia, a lot of Malay grammar will feel familiar in terms of what you need to say and what you don’t. Malay doesn’t mark verbs for tense, it doesn’t require verbs, adjectives, or determiners to agree with nouns for gender, number, or person. And it makes use of a fairly clear and predictable word order to show the relationship between the words in a sentence.
On the other hand, Malay has a fairly complex process of building words in terms of their meaning (“derivational morphology”), particularly with verbs, and a rich array of particles that Western European languages make do without. Many students used to Western European languages can find this side of Malay intimidating, just as they find the absence of inflectional morphology to be a relief.
How To Master Malay Effectively: 5 Helpful Tips
The quick and short answer to learning Malay effectively is to develop a mindset of learning Malay and maintain consistency in learning the new language.
When learning Malay, as with any language, a lot of students can find themselves intimidated at different phases of their learning by the difficulties they encounter which can have a demoralizing effect.
Pro tip: I recommend that students familiarize themselves with the outlines of the difficult features of the language at the very beginning without actually learning them. Then, repeatedly revisit them in general and in-depth as one goes “on the side” of a learning method that is focused on acquiring vocabulary. Consequentially, they’ll be leaning on the more approachable features of the language to keep their energy and morale for the process of learning the language high.
So, how to learn Malay effectively? Below are some tips to address the difficult features of the Malay language.
1. Focus On Malay Vocabulary
Much of the vocabulary of Malay is specific to the family it belongs to (Austronesian), which provides it with its core vocabulary, and the region in which it grew (Southeast Asia, in particular, the region surrounding the island of Borneo), which provides Malay with much of its advanced vocabulary.
There are loanwords from Western European languages due to the language’s modern history, but that won’t carry you nearly as far as an English speaker as it will even with languages like Russian or Greek. Rich in vocabulary from Sanskrit (which lends the language its word for “language”: bahasa), Arabic, Persian, and even languages spoken as minority languages in Malaysia such as Tamil and Chinese, part of the challenge but also the fun of Malay is that you will have to learn many new words for so many things!
2. Understand Word Order
Malay sentences rely on a fairly predictable and regular word order. The overall sentence structure is SUBJECT – VERB – OBJECT, putting it in good company with major world languages like English, Spanish, or Chinese. But of course, some features of how Malay sentences are formed are going to be new for you.
Nouns are generally followed by things that modify them. This means that adjectives, possessors, and demonstratives like this (ini) and that (itu) both go after the noun that is described or possessed, the opposite of in English. The good news is that these are simpler than in English. There’s no different form for plurals like “these” or “those”, there aren’t even different forms for nouns in the plural than the singular, “orang” can be “person” or “people”.
Even possessives are the same words in a different order. “Our” is basically the same word as “we or “us.” Same with kita or kami, depending on the fact that you’re including the person you’re speaking to in the “we.”
Bear in mind that this doesn’t apply to numbers and measure words that connect numbers to nouns. You can think of modifier words that aren’t numerical as having a similar relationship to nouns that verbs do. For instance, buku besar translates to English as “big book”, but you can think of it as “book [that is] big.” Buku besar ini, which means “this big book”, can be translated as “book [that is] big [that is] this [one]”.
This might be confusing at first, but in some ways, it helps avoid confusion. If we know that ini used after a noun is how we attach “this” to a noun, then ini used before a noun must be a pronoun in its own right. That’s because Malay doesn’t need a word like “is.” For example, ini telefon means “this is a telephone” and telefon ini means “this telephone.”
3. Be Aware Of The Simple But Distinctive Morphology
As I’ve already emphasized, Malay nouns don’t decline for case or number, and Malay verbs aren’t marked for person or number or tense. But Malay nouns can be modified in many ways still, mostly to change the meaning rather than to show how they fit in with other words in the sentence.
Many Malay words are formed by “compounding”, that is, simply by putting two other words together, much like “city-state” in English. In Malay, it is negara kota with negara on its own meaning “sovereign state” and kota meaning “city.” Interestingly, both these words were loaned into Malay from Indic languages.
Single words can also be compounded with themselves, doubled up, in a process called “reduplication”, to create the sense of plurality, or emphasis, or other effects. Features like these are easy to understand when you encounter them, even if they’re hard to learn when and how to do correctly yourself on the spot.
4. Pay Special Attention To Complex Prefixes & Suffixes
A lot of the difficulty for intermediate students of the Malay language, in particular, is they’ve gotten so used to not learning anything but vocabulary to advance, that the derivational morphology for verbs and nouns seems more intimidating than it should. Verbs in particular can take many additions in the form of prefixes and suffixes to change their meaning, knowledge of these being crucial to speaking the language properly!
Consulting grammars of Malay is crucial for correctly identifying prefixes and suffixes with their forms and meanings. If you make yourself flash cards for these just as you would for root words, you will find your vocabulary expanding much more rapidly, and ultimately with greater ease.
In English, we can modify a verb by adding an -er at the end to mean the person who does that action, like: listenER, sellER, bakeR. Malay too can create a noun meaning the person who does an action, but with the prefix PE-.
This one is very frequent and also can be difficult for students to learn because the form changes depending on the first sound of the word it attaches to. For example, masak (to cook) becomes pemasak (a cook). But many other verbs might replace their first letter and/or add a nasal sound like n or m between the PE- prefix and the root. For instance, ajar is “to teach”, a teacher is pengajar; beli is “to buy”, and a buyer is pembeli; sapu is “to sweep”, and penyapu (!) is a broom!
This is just one prefix, but Malay has many common suffixes, like -kan, which attaches to the end of a verb to give a meaning like “to make [the object of the sentence] do [the verb]” “to have [the object of the sentence] do [the verb]”. This is what’s called a “causative” by linguists, and you won’t be able to avoid it if you’re going to be speaking Malay!
Some sets of prefixes and suffixes go together, such as when modifying a root to make an abstraction noun: adil means “fair” or “just”, and “justice” is keadilan, for which you need both the ke- at the beginning and the -an at the end. Neither are optional or separate from each other!
I can’t possibly include enough in this short blog to teach you much, but I hope the message is clear You have to treat learning these prefixes and suffixes as one of the most important ongoing tasks in your Malay studies. Over time, they will seem friendly and helpful instead of intimidating, because they will mean you can modify words you already have instead of learn new words. Until then, take heart at all the short words you can put together to make Malay sentences.
5. Practice Malay Dialogues Every Day With Ling
Not only is one blog entry too short, but a day or a week is too short to learn any language. You need to spread your Malay studies out over time, be patient with yourself, but also persistently work your way up, expanding your vocabulary by reading and speaking in many contexts.
Many students these days turn to language learning apps to get into regular daily practice. One app that I might recommend, particularly to Malay learners, is Ling. Ling boasts more languages than almost all other language apps, and has particularly good coverage of Southeast Asia’s official language. Dozens of units covering all major everyday and travel topics are available for, among other languages, Malay and Indonesian.
The Learn Malay course offers over 200 lessons that cover beginner to advanced vocabulary and phrases. Apart from that, there is native speaker audio to ensure that learners develop authentic pronunciation. The Ling app also offers engaging games, such as matching vocabulary with images, sentence-building exercises, and chatbot-based conversations, giving users hands-on practice. With instant feedback on pronunciation and the flexibility to learn on mobile or tablet, it’s an excellent tool for mastering Malay.
Moreover, with Ling, you’ll be able to drill yourself on important vocabulary and practice sentences and even in-app conversations every day, all for a yearly cost which is significantly less than a semester of classes. You’ll have access not only to Malay and Indonesian, but all of the many languages Ling offers, and new ones are still being added!
Start Speaking Malay Today: Learn Faster With Ling
Learning Malay can be an incredibly rewarding journey as it opens doors to new vistas and new cultures. It enables friendships and lifetime opportunities across Southeast Asia. While the language has its challenges, with patience and the right approach, you’ll find yourself mastering it step by step.
And remember, language learning doesn’t have to be overwhelming! Apps like Ling make it easy to practice daily, helping you build vocabulary and confidence through interactive exercises. So, why not give it a try? With just a few minutes a day, you’ll be speaking Malay in no time and enjoying the beauty of this beautiful language.
You can download it from the App Store and Google Play Store today!