South Barisan Malay, also called Central Malay or Middle Malay, is a collection of closely related Malayic isolects spoken in the southwestern part of Sumatra. None of them has more than one million speakers.

Name

Traditionally, Malayic lects in southern Sumatra are divided based on river shed and microethnic boundaries, regardless of actual similarities and differences between them. Linguists originally used the term ''Middle Malay'' (a calque of Dutch ) when referring to the closely related lects in the Pasemah-Serawai cultural region. Later, to avoid misidentification with a temporal stage of

Malay language Malay ( , ; , Jawi alphabet, Jawi: ) is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language spoken primarily by Malays (ethnic group), Malays in several islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula on the mainland Asia. The lang ...

(i.e. the transition between Old Malay and Modern Malay), the term ''Central Malay'' began to be used. McDonnell (2016) uses the geographic term ''South Barisan Malay'' instead, referring to the southern region of the

Barisan Mountains The Bukit Barisan or the Barisan Mountains are a mountain range on the western side of Sumatra, Indonesia, covering nearly 1,700 km (1,050 mi) from the north to the south of the island. The Bukit Barisan range consists primarily of volca ...

where these lects are spoken. Meanwhile, ''

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 ...

'' uses the term ''Central Malay'' instead to refer Malayic varieties around the

strait of Malacca The Strait of Malacca is a narrow stretch of water, long and from wide, between the Malay Peninsula to the northeast and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the southwest, connecting the Andaman Sea (Indian Ocean) and the South China Sea (Pa ...

and

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by South China, in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan island, Taiwan and northwestern Philippines (mainly Luz ...

(e.g. Deli Malay, Riau Malay, or

Sarawak Malay Sarawak Malay ( Standard Malay: ''Bahasa Melayu Sarawak'' or ''Bahasa Sarawak'', Jawi: , Sarawak Malay: ''Kelakar Sarawak'') is a Malayic language native to the State of Sarawak. It is a common language used by natives of Sarawak and also as ...

), grouped under ''Greater Riau–Johoric'' branch.

Varieties

McDowell & Anderbeck (2020) classified South Barisan lects into 2 major dialect clusters, namely 1) Oganic and 2) Highland. * Oganic ** Ogan ** Rambang ** Enim * Highland **

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 ...

** Besemah ** Lematang Ulu ** Lintang ** Semende ** Benakat ** Serawai **

Kaur Kaur ( urmukhi/ hahmukhi ), sometimes spelled as Kour, is a surname or a part of a personal name primarily used by the Sikhism, Sikh and some Hindu women of the Punjab region. It is also sometimes translated as 'lioness', not because ...

(ISO 639-3: vkk) ** Pekal (ISO 639-3: pel) This classification was partially adopted (with the exception of Pekal) by ''

'' in its latest version (4.8). All ISO 639-3 language codes for South Barisan Malay varieties were merged into sein 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 ...

, with the exceptions of kkfor Kaur and elfor Pekal. The old codes ( ke ni nt gn dd rj are no longer in active use, but still have the meaning assigned to them when they were established in the Standard.

References

{{incubator, pse Malayic languages Languages of Indonesia