The Malay Language (Bahasa Melayu) 

I'm Vietnamese, and I have to say "wow, I can know what will come next in the sentence". Malay Language has the same grammar as Vietnamese. That's so cool! Maybe I'll try to learn Bahasa Melayu someday :))

I was born and raised in southern Thailand, Sungai Golok, near the Malaysian border, Kelantan. In the past, it was the same country, but now it's seperated. I went to Thai school until the university, but at home we speak Kelantanese and I know how to speak the standard Malay since we live close to Kelantan, Malaysia and also have relatives live there. However, the Melayu ethnics in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala (Southern Thailand) speaks their own Melayu dialects which are now the mixtures of bahasa Melayu, Thai, Indonesia and some other loan words. At the present time, I've been working in Malaysia university as a Mandarin lecturer for almost 7 years. ;-)

I really love the part when he said ‘There is no grammatical gender’ and start dancing. I am glad too.

I’m screaming because everything that made French a nightmare for me In school... this language just kicks to the curb. Omg.

I'm Thai. I speak Malay is first Language. I'm from Southern of Thailand^^

I am always impressed when i see languages that are so simple grammatically compared to English.

the hardest thing about malay for me is how there are SO MANY words for one verb eg: 'CARRY' in english. MEMBAWA - carry/bring. MENGANDAR - carry on a stick. MENJINJING/MEMJINJIT/MEMBIMBIT - carry in a bag/bucket. MENJUNJUNG - carry on the head. MENGALAS - carry on your back.... etc etc

Yeah, Malay is a really easy language to learn. Its no wonder it became the lingua franca of the south East Asian archipelago.

Kepada seluruh orang Melayu janganlah merasa rendah diri terhadap bahasa Melayu. Biarlah bahasa Melayu itu berdiri sama tinggi dengan bahasa2 lain di dunia...

You totally did NOT butcher 'Brunei'! We Bruneians pronounce it as 'Broon-EYE', too! Aside from that, amazingly informative video!

I'm teaching some malay language in my channel in japanese, and this video helps me alot on explaning malay's grammar and stuff. thanx ;)

I'm a Bruneian and we don't pronounce Brunei, "Brunei". We pronounce it "Broon-EYE".

'Brunei' is indeed pronounced as 'Brunai'. "-ei" is the old or non-standard spelling. Another example would be 'sungei' for 'river' but pronounced as 'sungai' (which is also the current spelling).

I'm a Filipino. When I went to Malaysia, it's fun to recognize shared words! Even if I don't speak the language, I can sort of guess the meanings of the signs. :-)

That awkward moment when foreigner know better your language than you as a native speaker..

dari pengalaman saya orang malaysia dan indonesia cuman berantem di internet doang coba bertemu langsung, palingan diajak ngopi dan ngobrol bareng wkwk

I'm a simple man. I see a new langfocus video i press like.

it should be noted that indonesian and malay were colonised by different countries at different times and there's a massive amount of loan words which sometimes do not match up. Both have Portuguese loan words, but Malay has more English and Indonesian has many words borrowed from dutch.

Malayan is beautiful in its logic, it is at a level with Esperanto

I'm Indonesian and I can watch upin ipin or any malaysian tv shows without having any problem of understanding.

Thank you very much for making this video, Paul! It seems like a really simple and interesting language. _Bahasa Malayu_...intriguing!

Very informative video. Orang asli (the aborigines) are the Malays ancestors, they're known as Proto Malays. The modern Malays now known as Deutero Malays. Same as the Borneon tribe as well.Taiwanese Aborigines,the Chams, the fijian, Maori, Chammoro in Madagaacar. Guam. Hawaian all the pacific islander we are in the same under one family known as Austronesia. In Ancient time, there was no country name as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Borneo, Cambodia, Vietnam etc, this whole South East Asia was known as Malay Archipelgo a.k.a Nusantara. The Malays are a great seafarer. There was a hundreds of Ancient Malay Hindu-Buddha Kingdom was in power in this Nusantara. That time the malays practiced animism, hinduism and buddism. Fu Nan, Champa, Kedah Tua, Langkasuka, Chih Tu, Kelantan Tua, the Great Sriwijaya, Sailendra, Tambralinga, Majapahit just name a few. This all great and rich kingdom make India and China Maharaja trade and do business with the Malay King Maharaja. Until Islam came in the 15th to Nusantara, Sultanate Malay to take over and of course another great and rich kingdom known as Melaka Sultanate Empire. This period the ancient Malay language with the Rencong writing from the old hindu buddha times had been modernize to the classical Malay language with the Jawi arabic writings and that time that language became the Lingua Franca of the South east asia. The malays at this period now are mostly muslim converted from their old religion hinduism/buddism. All traders from India, China arab persian, europe must learn and speak the malay language before do business with the Malay King and sultanate.. untill the Portuguese attacked Melaka, British invaded Malaysia/Siam, the Netherlands invaded Indonesia, same goes the philipines with spain, etc. until we Malaysian as it is now. Last but not least, not to forget the Malays in Bali still practising hinduism, Malays in philipines mostly christianity, the islander polynesian hawaian, fijian tahiti, aborigines still practicing animism. We are the missing brothers of Malayo Polynesia

Bahasa Melayu paling senang sekali nak belajar. Nepal, Bangla, Vietnam yang baru datang sebulan kerja dekat Malaysia dah boleh berbahasa melayu. Even mat saleh yang berbulan bulan duduk dekat malaysia sikitt2 dah boleh cakap melayu. No wonder suatu masa dulu bahasa melayu diiktiraf sebagai "lingua franca" sebagai bahasa perdangangan/perantaraan rantau archipelago.

My native language :D Siapa disini orang Melayu ?

With all these "no grammar" for Malay, I still got a B for Malay and an A for English. Edit (After 4 years): I got an A+ for both BM and BI in my SPM and that was more than 6 years ago. And I scored a 7 in my Malay HL in IB while the rest of my subjects I got a 6 including English. 7 was the highest grade you can get. I'm 24 now.

Paul, don't let the haters get you down. Say Brunei like you say Brunei. There's no way to please everyone.

Pergh bangga aku ada orang luar cerita tentang Bahasa Melayu.. 🇲🇾🇸🇬🇧🇳

Interesting as always, especially the history of the language. Thank you!

No you did not slaughter the name of Brunei. In Malaysia, we actually pronounce Brunei like how you did initially, Broon-eye.

Ramai antara kita tak tahu pasal sejarah bahasa Melayu.

Fun fact: In formal Bahasa Malaysia taught in schools, "orang-orang" is typically used refer to scarecrows. I can't think of another word at the moment where reduplication can be used to also change the meaning of the word. This video was an awesome watch! P.S: I pronounce Brunei the same English way too and I'm from Malaysia.

Im a filipino...my question is ... is it easy for me to study Bahasa Malaysia? by the way there are lots of Tagalog words that has the same meaning with Bahasa Malaysia.

I think that the phrase 'do not want' in Standard Malay is 'tidak mahu', 'tak nak' sounds more like West Malaysian dialect

Team Malaysia anyone? 🇲🇾🇲🇾🇲🇾🇲🇾🇲🇾🇲🇾🇲🇾

I don't think I've ever used "memakankan" all my life haha. Theoretically the term exists but it's just not used.

So this Kelantan place is the Bavaria of Malaysia. Somehow every Country has that ThickAccentPlace.

When I was a child I called Brunei Bru neih, but my parents laughed at me and correct me as Bru Naai ;-; - A Malaysian

Filipino here. MARAMING SALAMAT SA PAGGAWA NITO! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS! I'm currently learning Spanish so I'm learning more and more about Tagalog, but I think the Malay cognates form the missing link

You only touched a bit about the dialects, but it's actually very interesting to look at. It varies wildly between parts of the peninsula, and between the East Malaysian states. The northern states of Perlis, Kedah and Pulau Pinang spoke the Utara (northern) dialect (they might be subtle differences between them), Perak, Kelantan, Terengganu, Melaka, Sabah, Sarawak and Negeri Sembilan all have their own distinct dialects (the latter is related to Minang), and Selangor and Kuala Lumpur doesn't really have their own dialect as they adopt the KL-ite urban Malay slang (which you hear often on television). Also interesting fact: there are Malays in Cambodia and Vietnam! They speak the Cham dialect, and being furthest removed from the rest of the speakers they're quite unintelligible. Similar case for the other dialects, particularly of the eastern peninsular states for those unfamiliar with it or just learning Malay.

It's incredible how much language reflects history. I always find it fascinating to learn about the origins of words like orangutan, and the sorts of words that appear as loan words like book. I find it really connects humanity. Thanks for another great video. I learnt a lot.

I'm Chinese and speak Malay from Brunei

for colloquial malay, the affixation is almost barely used, like for example to say 'the teacher is teaching his students" standard malay: 'cikgu itu *mengajar* anak-anak murid' colloquial malay. 'cikgu itu *ajar* anak-anak murid"

the malay looks like a great language, thanks for the video!

Can any Malay read this? سايَ ادالَهْ توليسَنْ يَڠْ دِبونوهْ أَولَيهْ بَڠْساكو سنْديري.

Malay language have many version,it is : 🇲🇾(Malay-Malaysian) 🇧🇳(Malay-Bruneian) 🇸🇬(Malay-Singaporean) 🇮🇩(Malay-Indonesian) 🇹🇭(Malay-Thai/Pattani) 🇲🇲(Kedahan Malay/Burmese Malay) 🇵🇭(Malay-Mindanao) 🇻🇳🇰🇭🇱🇦(Malay-Champs) 🇹🇱(Malay-Timorese) 🇦🇺(Malay-Cocos,Kataning) 🇿🇦(Malay-Cape) 🇱🇰(Malay-Sri Lankan) These is The Malay variation language

Salam sejahtera semua, saya ingin ketengahkan di sini bahawa saya sebagai salah seorang pelajar di universiti awam di Malaysia yang mengangkat tinggi martabat Bahasa Melayu, sangatlah menghargai usaha tuan dalam memperjelaskan struktur bahasa Melayu dengan jelas dan mudah difahami.. Akhir kata, terima kasih kerana memuatnaik video yang penuh dengan pengisian berguna bagi mereka yang berhasrat memahami bahasa Melayu. As a student who needed to write a thesis in malay language in compliance with Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka Malaysia, that's pretty much how I write..

I am gonna do a Malay challenge either in Obon or new year’s. Thanks for all of this info. Currently learning Taiwanese Mandarin and I am sooooo here for languages without inflections. Also that word order is soooo beautifully familiar. As a Japanese speaker the first time you have a different word order is a doozy.

Hebat, ini adalah video terbaik mengenai Bahasa Melayu di RU-vid. (Fantasic, this is the best video about the Malay Language on RU-vid)

The easiest language to learn in Malaysia. As I'm a Malaysian Chinese can easily handle this language without difficulty.

I'm a college student in Malaysia and we once watched your video in our Sociolinguistics class! Thank you so much for this informative video and I admire your passion in languages :)

Now im proud with my language ( Malay ) Saya berbanga dgn bahasa sya!

I guess before the Spaniards colonized the Philippines, we were talking a lot in Malay language. But I guess we branched out after that. But we have lots of similar words: Tenghari - Tanghali (afternoon) Mahal - Mahal (expensive) Kucing - Kuting (cat) Mengharap - Mangarap (hope, aspire)

You pronounced it correctly, I say Brunei like how you initially said it. I’m from Malaysia by the way.

According to my teachers from the Malaysian Language And Heritage Chamber (DBP), all Malay nouns are plural unless otherwise indicated. So "fish are expensive today " is "ikan mahal hari ini". To indicate a noun is singular, one has to add a numerator (satu, dua, ...) or a numerical descriptor (penjodoh bilangan) such as "sebuah rumah" (a house), "seutas tali" (a string), "sebiji epal" (an apple) and so on. Duplicating a noun may make it into something else. "Orang " is people but "orang-orang" is a scarecrow. "Awan" is cloud but "awan-awan" is a ceiling. "Otak" is brain but "otak-otak" is a fish-based Malay dish.

Saya sekarang belajar bahasa Indonesia di Jepan, tetapi saya mau belajar bahasa Malaysia juga!

It's a Very thorough history of Malay language. Some of that I didn't even know it. Our school should use your video as teaching materials.

im actually surprised that there are lots of Malay language very similar to Tagalog and other dialects in the Philippines.:)

There is one more group of language which is bahasa istana . Makan =santap , sakit =gering, murka = marah etc. Which is quite unique i feel.

Fun fact: orang-orang means scarecrow

thanks man! you're like, the best. one of the most useful and educational channels on RU-vid

"termakan - to be eaten accidentally" ...wait what?

you can make a text book out of this.Literally we learn this in Pre-University in Malaysia

can you do an episode on the Celtics languages like, irish, cornish, breton, Welsh , etc.

WOW! Bahasa Malysia and Bahasa Indonesia are so fun and easy to learn! Respect from Vietnam.

Hey dude i got hooked to your videos since last week. Awesome work you do!

Yes, in most cases reduplication create plural noun but you used a wrong example. "Orang-orang" actually means "scarecrow".

I was amazed to find samskrit words in malaysian when I first tried to read a malaysian paper. They were perfectly recognizable, and in fact it seems like most of them didn't change.

I am a native Malay speaker and even I'm bad at my own language. And me being a fluent English speaker, my classmates always ask me for translations and I sometimes can't find the right word, even though I know what the word meant. Anyone feel me?

Oh no I'm Singaporean & I've always thought Brunei was pronounced "Brun-eye"

thanks for promoting my ansestor's language to the world, your friend from Malaysia

Wow it's actually amazing to hear a slightly intelligible language XD I speak Filipino (Mostly Tagalog with a handful of Ilocano mixed in) and I can hear the cognates very well :D The Malayu 'ajar' which is 'to teach' is close to the tagalog 'aral' which means 'to learn'. The word 'drink' in tagalog is 'inum' which is close to the malayu 'minum'. The word 'eat' in tagalog is 'Kain' but in ilocano, it's 'mangan' which is similar to malayu 'makan'. And I can see why 'milk' in malayu is 'susu' since in Ilocano, that word means nipples XD Main difference is that Philippine languages tend to be VSO in structure while Malayu is SVO but that isn't really a problem for me since English is also SVO :D I think there's probably more similarities with Bahasa Indonesia but I might be wrong :/

You make it seem as logical and easy as Esperanto. Is that really true or are there some things that are a bit more tricky in the language?

We speak Melayu Manado in North Sulawesi. It was introduced most likely by the portuguese as a lingua franca because we have more than 15 local languanges. Now we just say it as bahasa Manado.

@langfocus you pronounce Brunei right the first time, we locals (I'm bruneian) pronounce it the same way like English (Brun-Eye).

When will you do one on Maori? It seems equally simple and shares a common origin with Bahasa. FYI, the New Zealand Te Rauparaha Haka ( ka mate) is ideal to see the structure of that language.

Salam Aleikum from Algeria :)

Aku orang Malaysia tau semua ni....sebab kami belajar sejarah...yg x belajar je yg claim itu ini.....jommm kita bangunkan nusantara ni bersama2

Seriously, this is a great video! Thanks for sharing this to the WORLD!

"susu" is a kids' word for urine in many Indian languages. But when you're in Singapore or Malaysia you always see these big cartons of "susu" (milk) or "teh susu" (milk tea) in supermarkets.

I'm Vietnamese living in Germany, so I have to deal with a tonal language that has more tones than Mandarin Chinese as well as with German, the probably most unbearable and hardest language in terms of grammatical rules. 😂 As far as I remember, at 8:24 the same applies to Vietnamese: - no articles or grammatical gender - no tenses regarding verb conjugation - no affixation - no plural form - Roman alphabet Yet most challenging: the tones.

This is the first time I've stumbled on your videos. I'm truly impressed. Subbed bro.

lmao 'slaughtered the word brunei'. you pronounced it right, it's Brun-EYE not Bru-NAY

Kelantan is pronounced Ke-la-tay in that dialect.

Cool Paul, congrats! Really great info about the Malay language! I enjoy watching your videos as I myself am also very interested in learning new languages. Keep up the good work! 👍👍😊✅

emang,,gk salah lagi ke3 negara yg di sebutkan memang menggunakan bahasa melayu sebagai bhs nasional

At 11:02, the spelling for "mangajar" should be "mengajar"

I grew up in Brunei. We pronounced the name as Bru-nai in both Malay and English. Bru-ney is weird! and wrong!

Malaysian right here, wassup internet

being a South Sumatran, I can understand someone speaking Malay quite extensively... I think the closer you are from Malay Peninsula, the easier you could communicate with non-Indonesian Malays (I noticed that Riaunese is closer to Malay than Jambinese or (Downtown) Palembangnese)

jom (melayu) / yuk (indonesia) kita belajar bahasa....

we malaysian speaks broken malay while other foreigners learn so hard just to speak malay perfectly

Awesome! Greetings from Kuala Lumpur!

How many people can still read Jawi here? سلامت سياڠ سموا

This is one of the most useful videos of how to learn Malay. Could you please do a complete series of this? I have lived in Malaysia for years and years and can't seem to pick up the language at all. Is there a list of the affixations that you mention or phrase of words?

Mahal is the Filipino word for expensive. I am half-filipino who is has linguistics interest. I don't speak Filipino but I speak Mandarin and conversational Spanish and Arabic. I went to Malaysia and I could understand some Malay. Strangely I spoke more Mandarin and Spanish in Malaysia. I love Malaysia, but linguistically it is a mess. I could but could not understand people.

im a native speaker of Bahasa Melayu (or BM, as we would abbreviate it) and i can understand Indonesian with almost perfecta ease cos its more of a dialect than another language altogether (imo, debatable tho) compared to other malayo-polinesian languages like tagalog or javanese etc. true, relatively speaking, it is an easy language to learn, u dont need a good slang or pronunciation and BM speakers can definitely understand u well (*wink2 arabic & French XD) fun fact : funny you used 'orang' as an example for plural form cos 'orang-orang' also means scarecrow! p.s. ive been a subscriber since

Omg the "ada" or "there is" is the same with Waray (a Philippine language spoken in the easternmost part of Eastern Visayas). I'm a Cebuano but my father is of Waray origin and they use "ada" the same way. Meanwhile, in Western Visayas, they use "ara" which means the same in their language called Hiligaynon aka Ilonggo. In my native language, however, we have "naa" but it's etymology came from "anaa" or to desperately find correlations, "ana(a)". Now, "ada", "ara", "ana" sounds the same. Haha.

I'm a Chinese living in Malaysia I picked up malay as my second language , in fact my malay and English are better than my mandarin(this ticks of some older generations) and I study in a Chinese independent school let's just say that the school I study in has very little regard towards English and malay they mainly focus on mandarin since it's call a "Chinese" independent school but still as a citizen of Malaysia I think all citizen should at least learn to read , speak and write the basics of malay to go through daily life but from what I experience in my class, bloody hell my classmates malay are bloody awful

You missed the most fascinating aspect of all - Malagasy of Madagascar is also part of this language family. That's why it's called MALAgasy. The first inhabitants of Madagascar reached the island from South East Asia approximately 2 millenia ago!!

I wonder if the Cape Malays in South Africa would speak the same language as this.