Singaporean Malay

The history of Singaporean Malay is inseparable from the historical origins of the island of Singapore itself. Singapore as a country was come into existence only in 1965 after the Singapore got independence from the ruling British Singapore (with two years period of emptiness dating since 1963 to 1965). Before the Dutch-British colonization partition, Singapore Island used to be part of the larger Riau Islands group, similar way like Batam Island does.

The statue of Sang Nila Utama (a Palembang-origin prince) and his kris (a Javanese dagger) at the Raffles Landing Site in Singapore.

Riau Islands (which also including Singapore Island) was the subject of the Malay Kingdom, a historical kingdom based in Central-Eastern Sumatra. Since then, the popularity of the Malay speech (nowadays considered as language) has spread to Singapore. Prior to that, the common ancestor of all Malay dynasties, Sang Sapurba and Sang Nila Utama (the prince of Palembang-origin),[4] also set his mastery on the island of Singapore and has become the prominent figure that contributed in the founding of Singapore Kingdom.[5] Further more, the Bugis and Javanese royals who came to Singapore also contributed the development of ancient Singapore and left some noticeable remarks which later claimed as part of the Singaporean Malay as well.[6]

The gate of Sang Nila Utama Garden located at Fort Canning Hill, replicating the typical East Javanese gate structure of Majapahit empire.

The common and official writing system used for the Singaporean Malay is the Roman script as stated in the Constitution of Simgapore Article 153A Paragraph 2 on Official and National Languages,[3] heavily based on the Latin script of Indonesia (Dutch),[1] although slight differences is worth to notice since Singapore also used the admixture of British-based romanization. Another scripts has also used informally to write the Singaporean Malay, the main one is the Arabic script which took its root from the Arabi Malayalam (related to Perso–Arabic alphabets of Urdu and Ottoman Turkish), which is a modified form of Arabic script used by the Malayali people, the neighbouring ethnic group of Tamil.

It is generally accepted by the Singaporean linguists that Singaporean Malay is based on Riau Malay,[1] and most of the words are of Indonesia-origin (either it is Standard Indonesian, Javanese, Minangkabau, or even Bugis).[1] Besides that, words in Singaporean Malay are derived from multiple languages of foreign or non-Maritime Southeast Asia origins, mainly Arabic, Chinese (Hokkien and Mandarin), Dravidian (Malayalam and Tamil), and English.

• Singaporean Mandarin
• Singaporean English
• Singaporean Hokkien
• Singaporean Malays
• Brunei Malay
• Malaysian Malay