Today in #Indonesian vs #Malaysian #Malay and our respective European legacies: OHHHH, the word for "ceiling" is plafon. Yes, the Malay word is a localized loan word ('siling') but if not for my basic French, it would not have immediately registered to me. Anyway now i know Dutch and French both share this word ('plafond').

#TootSEA #MYToots

#TIL ...

"Early #Afrikaans developed as a pidgin from both #Dutch and #Malay. Its writing, pioneered mainly by religious teachers of Malay origin, was in the #Arabic script. Over time, the script was modified in parts to suit the needs of spoken Afrikaans. Arabic was the script of early Afrikaans from the 18th century. The first two written texts in Afrikaans were commentaries on the Qu'ran, their publication funded by the #Ottoman empire."

Why does this matter?

"Research on the written tradition in #Africa is relatively recent. Part of the reason lies in the wide acceptance of two assumptions: that Africa is an oral civilization, and that the literature written in Arabic is not part of African civilization."

"Reading Ibn Khaldun in #Kampala", Mahmood Mamdani, Journal of Historical #Sociology Volume 30, Issue 1: Ibn Khaldun - Theory and Methodology. March 2017, pages 1-106.

#Mini (#MiniLanguage) is "an attempt to create the simplest naturalistic #language for human communication".

It has around 1.000 words, with a shortened #MiniKore that consists of just 120 words - and it works!

Its goal is to be as simple to use as #Esperanto and #TokiPona, but without their disadvantages (in case of toki pona: to be more suitable for a wide range of topics).

It borrows words from #English, #German and other roman languages, as well as #TokPisin, #Malay, #Zulu, #Indonesian and many more.

Useful sentences on #omniglot:
https://omniglot.com/language/phrases/mini.htm

Find here 24 short stories on #duostories (from #duolingo) - I LOVE those 😍

https://duostories.org/mini-en

---

#LanguageLearning
#conlang

The secret to apparently finally getting a spot at Sambal Hijau, a stressfully popular eatery in Kampung Sungai Penchala (or how it's usually spelled, Kg Sg Penchala), is apparently showing up during #Ramadan hours because since it's not really open for dining in (culture + new #Islam​ic law regs) but the full spread is available for takeaways, tailored especially for berbuka (iftar).

KSP is another urban enclave that, due to its status as a #Malay Reserve Land and thus hard to exercise eminent domain for development, remains a time capsule of semi-urban Malay village life. Historically though it's mostly a settlement for newer migrants from Indonesia 🤣 meaning it's their children who gets folded into the Malay majority much like how whiteness as a polity works in the US. Anyway great spot to get Malay Peninsula-Indonesian cuisine like this one.

#Malaysia #Food #Jalan2CariMakan #TootSEA #MYToots

Strictly speaking only for the Malay-speaking set, it's fucking hilarious when the homophobes and rightwingers photocopy the same anglophone culture war about pronouns when:

1. We barely have the concept of (direct) pronouns
2. We don't have gendered pronouns
3. We don't really have singular vs plural nouns in that extremely codified way English does (it's context driven)

It's hilarious because the other feature of their politics is of course the ethnonationalism so idk how they're gonna square that excessive cultural pride when their own home language has been woke all along. :(

#Malay #Malaysia #MYToots #TootSEA

Just like anyone multilingual, it's one of life's little pleasures to just commit acts of grammatical terrorism in service of contributing to the creole corpus of your language group. I've mentioned 'dieded' before but here's another typical use case as a #Malay speaker: the endlessly versatile Malay suffix and prefix cases. I'm basically adding an action context to these verbs. ber- indicates active motion by the object, ter- indicates an action that's reflexive, automatic, or unintended.

It can work in the other direction. Malu can mean shame or humility or self-reserve so... I have heard of 'malufying situations'.

But the one that cracks me up is friends saying "berkancheonging for no reason", because now you're adding the Cantonese kancheong just to really emphasize someone falling into pieces with some hysterical anxiety.

Yon in Twitterjaya, I just learned that 'baklei' in #Afrikaans also originated from #Malay (in modern spelling it would be 'berkelahi'; to argue or fight*). @Zumbador, another shared word!

#MYToots #TootSEA #Malaysia

*Aiyoh why la our words to the world all aggressive one....

Saw a tweet (https://twitter.com/ArthurAsseraf/status/1628360291242106882?t=336hxIwNlgsdkEQDJuHz9A&s=19) about how in Malta, the word for Lent is Randan from the #Arabic Ramadan (which is the Islamic month of fasting; Ramadhan as it's spelled in #Malaysia) which reminds me that the #Malay word for fasting (puasa) is very much a legacy of our pre-islamic days as it's from the Sanskrit upavasa.

Interesting post from twt mutual, jumping off in a qt about #English as written by Indonesians that has 'ghosts' of #Indonesia​n in their English (reshared with consent):

There are certain features of #Malay grammar that bleed its way into the English of Malay language-speakers. Some features worth pointing out:

1. questions in Malay can be lexically expressed using the interrogative particle "kah" whereas English achieves this by tonal inflection.

2. aspect + tense + voice are very neatly separated by periphrastic expressions in Malay that English lacks e.g. sudah and sedang are aspect indicators. akan and telah are tense indicators. me- and di- are voice indicators. English mixes all 3 in confusing verb inflections.

3. Malay can express possession and genitiveness periphrastically using the possessive particle "punya" and "si". English only has the genitive particle "of".

#Malaysia #linguistics (1/3 🧵)

https://twitter.com/SurenVynn/status/1621197744974008322?t=ApVuV4WnNHI5Cm_mdW6LDg&s=19

Heads up to Malaysians and Malay speakers: there's a new translation of Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Found it via a mutual who contributed his commentary/review to CIE's book forum this year: https://ciedumalaysia.wordpress.com/pedagogi-kaum-tertindas/

"Di sini, kami berbesar hati memperkenalkan tiga pengulas tanah air yang telah menghadam buku ini dan merenung isu berkaitan pendidikan dan realiti semasa. Secara kolektif, mereka membawa pemerhatian dan komentar berkaitan isu pendidikan “bank”, soal kuasa dan transformasi, pembelajaran di dalam dan luar bilik darjah serta budaya ilmu yang (perlu) dirakyatkan."

#Malay #Malaysia #SouthEastAsia #Singapore #Brunei #Education

Did you know that in the #Penang Hokkien Dialect, affectionately referred to as PHD, there is a borrowed word from #Malay mata, that is used to refer to the cops?

Mata means eye.

#RaspberryPi #SurveillanceState #Malaysia

Kaki: It's #Malay and literally means 'leg' but noun/verb+kaki is a backformation for a term we use to describe afficionados, e.g. 'kaki futsal' means a futsal hobbyist, but since kaki is also a synecdoche for person not just an action by a person, we invented 'noun/verb+kaki' to mean your fellows in that activity. Hmm that sounds confusing. 🤣

#music share from a random country:
#Indonesia 🇮🇩
Indonesia, the world's largest archipelagic state with over 17k islands, has the motto of "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika" (unity in diversity) because of consisting of 1,300+ ethnic groups and 600+ languages. Although a secular democratic country, around 87% is Muslim; making It the most populous Muslim-majority country.
Dangdut is a syncretic #genre fusing #Hindustani and #Arabic elements with #Malay and more local musical styles, but the modern form can also incorporate rock, disco, reggae, and contemporary R&B; in short, unity in diversity, right? Admittedly, it has also been criticised as being a degenerate genre full of, well, twirking; way before that became a thing.
This is Berdarah lagi (bleeding again) by the Dangdut queen Elvy Sukaesih, likely about unrequited love. The Hindustani element is clearly present through the #tabla, whose heart-like "dangdut" rhythm gave the genre its name.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12E0v9Kccck
The next random country is a challenge, delving into (for me) unknown territory: #MarshallIslands 🇲🇭

I'm prepared for #Malaysia's new prime minister because I was alive when he was the Education Minister then Deputy Prime Minister.

(I came back to socmed chatter scrambling to find out what the heck is 'cerakin*', and I'm like, yup, Anwar is a minister again.)

*Rarely used #Malay word to indicate sorting in a research capacity, or to study something in order to identify its components

20 உலக மொழிகளில் மணிமேகலை மொழிபெயர்ப்பு https://patrikai.com/manimegalai-translation-in-world-languages-action/ via @patrikaidotcom@twitter.com

#MANIMEGALAI #SeethalaiSatanar #translation #Sinhala #malay #Burmese #Buddhism #Tamil

Hello! I from #Malaysia, nice to meet you. I am a #scout and here our website https://josrac.gitlab.io/ (it on Bahasa Melayu / #Malay / Ms)