| Malay part of Austronesian |
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Rosli Omar Mar 27, 01 7:52am |
I just would like to comment on Enlightened Malay's [#1]Vandalising our past to rule the future[/#] (March 23) in which he or she wrote that the basis of the Malay language is Sanskrit, and in fact, an offshoot of Sanskrit.
I am no linguist, but according to Jared Diamond in his most excellent book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies, (WW Norton, 1999) the Malay language is part of the Malayo-Polynesian group of languages, and together with the three Formosan languages (not the Han Chinese but the original inhabitants of Formosa) form the Austronesian group of languages.
The Austronesian languages originate from people who emigrated on their long sea voyages 5,500 years ago from Taiwan - and before that from mainland China. They arrived in the Malay Peninsula some 1,000 years later (2000 BC) and spread, to the one end, Madagascar (AD 500), and on the other end, Hawaii and Easter Island (also AD 500), and occupying along the way, Fiji and Samoa (the Polynesians, 1200 BC), and New Zealand (the Maoris, AD 1000).
The Sanskrit-based languages are part of the Indo-European group of languages. They come from the people who, on the one hand moved south to Iran and India, and on the other moved into Europe.
So, if anything, the Malays are closer to the Chinese than the Indians. But of course the Malay language is influenced by Sanskrit because of the long historical links with the Indian subcontinent, and, as well as by Chinese languages, Arabic and Portuguese (for example, the word bendera), and of course, more recently, by English. There is no shame in borrowing. Just look at the root words of most English words. Most are borrowed left and right from other languages.
But I agree with the writer that there is no need to make the Malay language, and its people, as alien, divorced from others. We need to learn to live with each other. We need to look at what we have in common rather than searching for some minute differences that can then be blown out of proportion.
But then again, there is a richness in diversity, in being different. We should appreciate this fact, too.
We could follow nature: diversity is strength - well, biodiversity for one.
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