The Musi languages consists of a collection of closely related Malayic varieties spoken in the eastern and northern regions of

South Sumatra South Sumatra () is a Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia, located in the southeast of the island of Sumatra. The capital and largest city of the province is the city of Palembang. The province borders the provinces of Jambi to the north ...

, as well as parts of

Bengkulu Bengkulu (), historically known as Bencoolen, 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 area of the historic Bencoolen Residency from the province of ...

. The Musi languages has a relatively high degree of

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelli ...

, despite its speakers not sharing a unified ethnic identity. Generally, speakers of Malayic varieties in this area refer to their language (in Indonesian) as ''bahasa'' 'language' + ame of region/river/ethnic group regardless of whether it is classified linguistically as an independent language or a dialect.

Classification

McDowell & Anderbeck (2020) classify the Musi varieties into two main dialect clusters: (1) Upper Musi and (2) Palembang–Lowland, which are further divided into subclusters and dialects, each with its own distinct characteristics. This classification is not purely based on the comparative method, which seeks to reconstruct the direct ancestor of these varieties, but rather on a synchronic dialectological approach. This includes lexicostatistical analysis, the distribution of phonological innovations, and mutual intelligibility testing The classification of the varieties is as follows: * Palembang–Lowland **

Palembang Palembang (, Palembang: ''Pelémbang'', Mandarin: 巨港 (Jùgǎng), Hokkien: 舊港 (Kū-káng), Jawi: ) is the capital city of the Indonesian province of South Sumatra. The city proper covers on both banks of the Musi River in the ea ...

*** Palembang Lama *** Palembang Pasar *** Pesisir ** Lowland *** Belide *** Penesak *** Lematang Ilir * Upper Musi ** Col/Lembak ** Musi ** Pegagan ** Rawas This classification has been adopted with modifications by

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

in its latest version (4.8). All

ISO 639-3 ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for ...

language codes for Musi varieties were merged into uiin 2007 by the

Summer Institute of Linguistics SIL Global (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics International) is an evangelical Christian nonprofit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, to expan ...

, except for the code iwfor Col. The old codes for Musi language varieties ( lm mt en ws are no longer actively used but still retain their assigned meanings as defined in the Standard.

References

Bibliography

* {{languages of Indonesia Malayic languages Languages of Indonesia