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- Malay (msa)

Malay is an Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, and that is also spoken in East Timor and parts of the Philippines and Thailand. There are 77 million native speakers of Malay and 290 million who speak Malay as a second language. Altogether, it is spoken by 290 million people (around 260 million people speak "Indonesian" which is a standardized variety of Malay) across Maritime Southeast Asia.

Standard Malay has various official names. In Malaysia, it is designated as either Bahasa Melayu Malaysia ("Malaysian Malay") or also Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language"). In Singapore and Brunei, it is called Bahasa Melayu ("Malay language"). In Indonesia, an autonomous normative variety called Bahasa Indonesia ("Indonesian language") is designated the bahasa persatuan/pemersatu ("unifying language" or lingua franca). Usage of the term "Malay" (bahasa Melayu) is restricted in Indonesia to refer to vernacular varieties of Malay indigenous to areas of Central to Southern Sumatra and West Kalimantan.

The earliest known inscriptions in Malay were found in southern Sumatra and on the island of Bangka and date from 683-6 AD. They were written in an Indian script during the time of the kingdom of Srivijaya.

There are several of the Malayic varieties they currently list as separate languages, including the Orang Asli varieties of Peninsular Malay, are so closely related to standard Malay that they may prove to be dialects. There are also several Malay trade and creole languages based on a lingua franca derived from Classical Malay as well as Macassar Malay, which appears to be a mixed language.

Sources: Wikipedia
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