South Barisan Malay
South Barisan Malay, also called Central Malay or Middle Malay, is a collection of related Malayic isolects spoken in the southwestern part of Sumatra. None of the Central Malay isolects has more than one million speakers.
| South Barisan Malay | |
|---|---|
| Central Malay | |
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Bengkulu South Sumatra Lampung |
Native speakers | 1.6 million (2000)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
| Dialects | Benakat Bengkulu Besemah Enim Kikim Kisam Lematang Ulu Lintang Ogan Rambang Semendo Serawai |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | pse |
| Glottolog | cent2053 |
Name
Traditionally, the term Middle Malay (a calque of Dutch Midden-Maleisch) is used when referring to this cluster. Later, to avoid misidentification with a temporal stage of Malay language (i.e. the transition between Old Malay and Modern Malay), the term Central Malay began to be used.[2] McDonnell (2016) uses the term South Barisan Malay instead, referring to the southern region of the Barisan Mountains where these isolects are spoken.[3]
Varieties
Ethnologue groups together 12 isolects as part of Central Malay.[4]
There has been little research on individual isolects within the cluster.
References
- South Barisan Malay at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- Adelaar, K. Alexander (1992). Proto-Malayic: The Reconstruction of its Phonology and Parts of its Lexicon and Morphology. Pacific Linguistics, Series C, no. 119. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University. hdl:1885/145782.
- McDonnell, Bradley James (2016). Symmetrical Voice Constructions in Besemah: A Usage-based Approach (PhD thesis). University of California, Santa Barbara.
- Lewis, M. Paul; Gary F. Simons; Charles D. Fennig, eds. (2015). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (18th ed.). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
