Thread by @AymanRashdanW

A parallel example would be the Vietnamese civilization.

Before the introduction of the Latin script by the French, the Vietnamese used Chinese script for their language. And a lot of words are borrowed from Chinese, like "civilization" (văn minh, from Chinese "wen ming").

https://twitter.com/rvikneshak/status/1418228178263298049

But despite the prevalence of Chinese loanwords, there are native words like "người" (people), "núi" (mountain) etc.

So does the Korean. There are a lot of Chinese loanwords, but words like "saram" (people), "sarang" (love), "nara" (country) are native Korean words.

The same goes for the Malay language. While there are a lot of loanwords from Sanskrit, Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, English, Chinese and even Gujarati ("hartal"), be mindful there are even more native Malay words like orang, hutan, mata, hari, gunung, laut and so forth.

These words can also be found in nearby languages like the Philippine languages, Bornean languages, Javanese, Maori etc. But don't simply make conclusion that Malays are "pendatang" due to this. It is like saying the Austrians are pendatang because they use the German language.

Malay and other Malay-like languages are part of the broader "Austronesian" ethnolinguistic family. This is where the Malay civilization started. Originally a seafaring, animist people, the Malays adopted Buddhism, before being Islamicized around 14th-15th century.

Those loanwords are being adopted gradually throughout the process, as the native words no longer enough for the more complex civilization. When there are no words can express certain religious or political concepts, they borrowed Sanskrit/Arabic words.

And interestingly, the Malays selectively retained many Hindu-Buddhist Sanskrit words like "dosa", "pahala" even after the Islamization. So it's not "Arabization".

As for the writing system, while every ethnicity/civilization have their own language, not all are able to develop their own writing system. The Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese all used Chinese scripts. Only the Koreans and Japanese were able to come up with Hangeul and Kana.

Despite the fact that Jawi were originated from Arabic/Persian, the Malays modified the script because the Arabic and Persian scripts have no letter for "nya" and "nga" sounds in native Malay words (like tanya, bunga). Almost all words with "nya" & "nga" are native Malay words.

Anyway, this is a subject too long, too academic for Twitter. I would recommend this book from the Andayas for a better understanding of the history of the Malay civilization.