Bengkulu or Bengkulu Malay is a Malayic language spoken on the

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

n island of Sumatra, around the city of

Bengkulu Bengkulu is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southwest coast of Sumatra. It was formed on 18 November 1968 by separating out the former Bencoolen Residency area from the province of South Sumatra under Law No. 9 of 1967 and was ...

, in the rest of the Indonesian province of

and in the

Pesisir Barat Regency Pesisir Barat Regency ( id, Kabupaten Pesisir Barat, literally West Coast Regency) is a new regency in Lampung Province of Indonesia. It was created on 25 October 2012 from the eight western districts of West Lampung Regency. It covers an area ...

("west coast") of

Lampung Lampung ( Lampung: ), officially the Province of Lampung ( id, Provinsi Lampung) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Sumatra. It has a short border with the province of Bengkulu to the northwest, an ...

Province. It is more closely related to other Malay variants in Sumatra such as

Col In geomorphology, a col is the lowest point on a mountain ridge between two peaks.Whittow, John (1984). ''Dictionary of Physical Geography''. London: Penguin, 1984, p. 103. . It may also be called a gap. Particularly rugged and forbidding co ...

, Jambi Malay and Palembang Malay as well

Minangkabau Minangkabau may refer to: * Minangkabau culture, culture of the Minangkabau people * Minangkabau Culture Documentation and Information Center * Minangkabau Express, an airport rail link service serving Minangkabau International Airport (''see belo ...

spoken in neighbouring

West Sumatra West Sumatra ( id, Sumatra Barat) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the west coast of the island of Sumatra and includes the Mentawai Islands off that coast. The province has an area of , with a population of 5,534,472 at the 2020 cen ...

than to the

Rejang language Rejang (, ) is an Austronesian language predominantly spoken by the Rejang people in southwestern parts of Sumatra (Bengkulu), Indonesia. There are five dialects, spread from mountainous region to the coastal region of Bengkulu, including the M ...

, which is also spoken in the province.

Phonology

Bengkulu is written in the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

and sometimes in

Rejang script The Rejang alphabet, is an abugida of the Brahmic family, and is related to other scripts of the region, like Batak, Lontara, and others. Rejang is a member of the closely related group of Surat Ulu scripts that include the script variants ...

Consonants

The letters , , and are used in loanwords from

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesia ...

Vowels

Bengkulu

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...

s are ai, au, ia and ua (where "ia" and "ua" are used in loanwords).

References

Languages of Indonesia Malay language Malay dialects {{malayic-lang-stub Malayic languages