Malaysian language in the context of "Malayic language"

A pluricentric language or polycentric language is a language with several codified standard forms, often corresponding to different countries. Many examples of such languages can be found worldwide among the most-spoken languages, including but not limited to Chinese in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and Singapore; English in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, India, Singapore, and elsewhere; and French in France, Canada, many African countries, and elsewhere.

The converse case is a monocentric language, which has only one formally standardized version. Examples include Japanese and Russian.In some cases, the different standards of a pluricentric language may be elaborated to appear as separate languages, e.g. Malaysian and Indonesian, Hindi and Urdu, while Serbo-Croatian is in an earlier stage of that process.

The word Japan is an exonym, and is used (in one form or another) by many languages. The Japanese names for Japan are Nihon ([ɲi.hoꜜɴ] ) and Nippon ([ɲip.poꜜɴ] ). They are both written in Japanese using the kanji 日本.

Since the third century, Chinese called the people of the Japanese archipelago something like "ˀWâ" (倭), which can also mean "dwarf" or "submissive". Japanese scribes found fault with its offensive connotation, and officially changed the characters they used to spell the native name for Japan, Yamato, replacing the 倭 ("dwarf") character for Wa with the homophone 和 ("peaceful, harmonious"). Wa 和 was often combined with 大 ("great") to form the name 大和, which is read as Yamato (see also Jukujikun for a discussion of this type of spelling where the kanji and pronunciations are not directly related). The earliest record of 日本 appears in the Chinese Old Book of Tang, which notes the change in 703 when Japanese envoys requested that its name be changed. It is believed that the name change within Japan itself took place sometime between 665 and 703. During the Heian period, 大和 was gradually replaced by 日本, which was first pronounced with the sound reading (on'yomi) Nippon and later as Nifon, and then in modern usage Nihon, reflecting shifts in phonology in Early Modern Japanese. In 1076, Turkic scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari in his book Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk mentioned this country as 'Jabarqa' (جَابَرْقَا). Marco Polo called Japan 'Cipangu' around 1300, based on the Chinese enunciation of the name, probably 日本國; 'sun source country' (compare modern Min Nan pronunciation ji̍t pún kok). In the 16th century in Malacca, Portuguese traders first heard from Indonesian and Malay the names Jepang, Jipang, and Jepun. In 1577 it was first recorded in English, spelled Giapan. At the end of the 16th century, Portuguese missionaries came to coastal islands of Japan and created brief grammars and dictionaries of Middle Japanese for the purpose of trade. The 1603–1604 dictionary Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam has 2 entries: nifon and iippon. Since then many derived names of Japan appeared on early-modern European maps.

Cocos Malay is a post-creolized variety of Malay, spoken by the Cocos Malays who predominantly inhabit the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island region which is a part/territory of Australia. Apart from Australia, this language is also spoken by the diaspora of Cocos Malay descendants in Sabah, Malaysia.

Linguistically, Cocos Malay derives from the Malay trade languages of the 19th century, specifically the Betawi language, with influences from Javanese and Sundanese. Malay is offered as a second language in schools, and Malaysian has prestige status; both are influencing the language, bringing it more in line with standard Malay.

The Malayic languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The most prominent member is Malay, a pluricentric language given national status in Brunei and Singapore while also providing the basis for national standards Malaysian in Malaysia and Indonesian in Indonesia. The Malayic branch also includes local languages spoken by ethnic Malays (e.g. Jambi Malay, Kedah Malay), further several languages spoken by various other ethnic groups of Sumatra, Indonesia (e.g. Minangkabau) and Borneo (e.g. Banjarese, Iban) even as far as Urak Lawoi in the southwestern coast of Thailand.

The most probable candidate for the urheimat of the Malayic languages is western Borneo prior to spread in Sumatra.

The indigenous languages of Malaysia belong to the Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian families. The national, or official, language is Malay which is the mother tongue of the majority Malay ethnic group. The main ethnic groups within Malaysia are the Bumiputera (which consist of Malays, Orang Asli, and, natives of East Malaysia), Arab Malaysians, Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Indians, with many other ethnic groups represented in smaller numbers, each with their own languages. The largest native languages spoken in East Malaysia are the Iban, Dusunic, and Kadazan languages. English is widely understood and spoken within the urban areas of the country; the English language is a compulsory subject in primary and secondary education. It is also the main medium of instruction within most private colleges and private universities. English may take precedence over Malay in certain official contexts as provided for by the National Language Act, especially in the states of Sabah and Sarawak, where it may be the official working language. Furthermore, the law of Malaysia is commonly taught and read in English, as the unwritten laws of Malaysia continue to be partially derived from pre-1957 English common law, which is a legacy of past British colonisation of the constituents forming Malaysia. In addition, authoritative versions of constitutional law and statutory law (written laws of Malaysia) are continuously available in both Malay and English.

Malaysia contains speakers of 137 living languages, 41 of which are found in Peninsular Malaysia. The government provides schooling at the primary level in each of the three major languages, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. Within Malay and Tamil there are a number of dialectal differences. There are a number of Chinese languages native to the ethnic Han Chinese who originated from Southern China, which include Yue, Min and Hakka Chinese.