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Bahasa Language
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Kapikulu View Drop Down
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Posts: 1914 		  Quote Kapikulu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Bahasa Language
    Posted: 12-Nov-2006 at 11:44
I was wondering where the Bahasa language was first spoken(Malaysia, Indonesia or somewhere even more distant?) and when, and by which tribe/kingdom/people?
 
It is also commendable that even though the Bahasa-speaking countries had a long past as colonies, they were still able to maintain the language.
 
And, what are the differences between Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu and for which reason those differences occurred?
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Posts: 2630 		  Quote flyingzone Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Nov-2006 at 13:57
The bahasa language was originally spoken in the regions around the Melakka straits but it gradually scattered all over Malaya and the various coastal areas of the islands of the Indonesian archipelago.
 
With the great variety of languages used by different peoples in the Indonesian archipelago and with the growing importance of trade and communication among them, the need for a lingua franca naturally arose, and the Malay language was "chosen" for several reasons:
 
1. The Malay language is quite easy to learn compared to other Indonesian languages. (There are, of course, many other Indonesian languages. Javanese, for example, has an extremely complicated grammatical structure and intricate systems of differentiation.)
 
2. The Kingdom of Sriwidjaja which dominated the region (Indonesia and possibly parts of the Philippines and Malaya) from 8th to 13th century was situated in a Malay-speaking region.
 
3. The areas in which the Malay language was first spoken were found on the coasts of Sumatra and the Malay peninsula, both bordering the Straits of Melacca which were, of course, the gateways to all the foreign trade going in and out the Indonesian archipelago.
 
 
 
Reference:
 
Nugroho, R. (1957) The origin and development of Bahasa Indonesia. PMLA, 72(2), 23-28.
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Posts: 2630 		  Quote flyingzone Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Nov-2006 at 14:02
Regarding the difference between bahasa malaysia and bahasa indonesia, both languages are in fact mutually intelligible:
 
 
"In Malaysia, the language is known as Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia, which means the Malay, or Malaysian, language. The latter term, which was introduced by the National Language Act 1967, was predominant until the 1990s, when most academics and government officials reverted to the older term, which is used in the Malay version of the Federal Constitution. Indonesia adopted a form of Malay as its official language upon independence, naming it Bahasa Indonesia and although a degree of mutually intelligibility exists, Indonesian is considerably distinct from Malay as spoken in Malaysia."
 
There is a more detailed article on the difference between the two, also provided by Wikipedia:
 
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Posts: 85 		  Quote Qutuz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Nov-2006 at 23:03
I was wondering where the Bahasa language was first spoken


Just noting that this sentence would seem funny to a Maly/English speaker, as Bahasa is merely the word in their language for "language". So you effectively said "..where the language language was first.."

Like when people say "The Sahara Desert" (Sahara is the Arabic word for Desert), so you're effectively saying "Desert Desert".
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Posts: 1914 		  Quote Kapikulu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Jan-2007 at 03:40
Originally posted by Qutuz



Just noting that this sentence would seem funny to a Maly/English speaker, as Bahasa is merely the word in their language for "language". So you effectively said "..where the language language was first.."

Like when people say "The Sahara Desert" (Sahara is the Arabic word for Desert), so you're effectively saying "Desert Desert".
 
LOLHeh, additional thanks for the useful info...I thought there was one language and two different variants so I assumed the name of the language was Bahasa..Never knew so much about linguistics of that region.Wink
We gave up your happiness
Your hope would be enough;
we couldn't find neither;
we made up sorrows for ourselves;
we couldn't be consoled;

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Posts: 3387 		  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-Jan-2007 at 04:04
Stop me if I'm wrong, but I thought malay was a pidgin language invented when europeans came to the east for trade for the first time. They could not communicate in each others language and so a kind of mixed vocabulaire with little grammar was used to understand each other. This is why Malay is easier to learn than other more fully evolved languages in the region. I seem to remember there are quite a lot of european words mixed up in Malay.

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Posts: 281 		  Quote jayeshks Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Jan-2007 at 15:11
Originally posted by Aelfgifu

Stop me if I'm wrong, but I thought malay was a pidgin language invented when europeans came to the east for trade for the first time. They could not communicate in each others language and so a kind of mixed vocabulaire with little grammar was used to understand each other. This is why Malay is easier to learn than other more fully evolved languages in the region. I seem to remember there are quite a lot of european words mixed up in Malay.


There are a lot of borrowed Dutch and Portugese words in Malay but I'm pretty sure Malay is still structurally pretty similar to other Malayo-Polynesian languages.  The rich trading tradition of the area resulted in a lot of outside loan words.  I think even 'bahasa' is borrowed from the Sanskrit 'bhasha' for 'language'. 
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