LANGUAGE DIVERSITY
Motorists at Snake Road, Tanjung Malim, Perak, in 1932, posing by a road sign written in English, Malay (Jawi), Tamil and Chinese.
At least 80 languages are spoken in Malaysia, making it one of the most complex linguistic communities in the world. Of these, some—drawn from the Austronesian and Austroasiatic language stocks—may be deemed indigenous to the Malay Archipelago. The Austronesian languages include Malay, the majority of the languages of Sarawak and Sabah, and more recent immigrant languages such as Acehnese, Javanese, Mandailing and Madurese. These latter languages are however not covered in this section, being spoken primarily by sojourners, and thus lacking stable speech communities.
The versatile Malay language has been used in a wide range of contexts for many centuries, and remains the most widely spoken language in the country, with several geographical and social variants. Most of the numerous Sarawakian and Sabahan languages are from the same Austronesian stock as Malay, and have close links to the languages of the rest of Borneo. In Sarawak it is Iban, a language that is closely related to Malay, that has the largest number of first language speakers. In Sabah the Dusunic languages spoken by the Kadazandusun ethnic group dominate. Unsurprisingly, these dominant languages are the best researched.
The survival of some minority languages of Sarawak and Sabah, and of several Aslian languages, spoken on the Peninsula by the aboriginal Orang Asli, is under threat. Some have already disappeared.
The numerous other languages used in Malaysia originate from outside the Malay World. Although Chinese speakers began to settle in Melaka in the 15th century, these early arrivals assimilated with the Malay population and adopted the Baba Malay creole (see ´Creoles´). It was only in the second half of the 19th century that large numbers of Chinese settled in the country and formed distinct speech communities of the South-eastern Chinese languages. Indian language speakers, primarily of Tamil, arrived at about the same time. English too became firmly established with the extension of British colonial administration to Malaya. Even after Independence, and despite there being only a small and transient first-language speaking population, English has evolved to become the de facto second language in Malaysia.
All of the non-indigenous Malaysian languages have undergone some degree of localization from their original form.