Bahasa Melayu :

Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family and the official language of Malaysia and Brunei; a standardized variety of Malay called Indonesian is official in Indonesia. It is one of four official languages of Singapore, and Indonesian is a working language of East Timor, a consequence of over twenty years of Indonesian administration. It is spoken natively by 40 million people across the Malacca Strait, including the coasts of the Malay Peninsula of Malaysia and southern Thailand, Riau province, the eastern coast of Sumatra, and the Riau Islands in Indonesia, as has been established as a native language of Jakarta and of part of western coastal Sarawak and Kalimantan in Borneo. As a second language, it is spoken by an estimated 140 million, mostly under the guise of "Indonesian". In Malaysia, the standard language is called Bahasa Malaysia "Malaysian language". In Singapore, Brunei, southern Thailand, and the southern Philippines it is called Bahasa Melayu "Malay language", and in Indonesia it is generally called Bahasa Indonesia, "Indonesian language", though Bahasa Nasional "National Language" and Bahasa Persatuan/Pemersatu "Unifying Language" are also heard. However, in areas of Sumatra and Riau where the language is indigenous, Indonesians refer to it as Bahasa Melayu.

 

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