Malaysian Language Analysis

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Malaysia is a multiracial country that uses Malay language as its official language. Malaysia is divided into six regions, which are Northern Region, Central Region, East Coast, Sabah, and Sarawak (ThingsAsian, n.d.). Malaysia is comprised of fourteen states, hence the Malay language is spoken in various dialects. The fourteen states are Perlis, Kedah, Pulau Pinang, Perak, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, Johor, Pahang, Terengganu, Kelantan, Sabah, and Sarawak. These states are divided accordingly to the six regions mentioned above.
According to Holmes (2013), there are two varieties of the same language, with one addressed as High (H) variety and one more is Low (L) variety. H variety is the standard language while L variety …show more content…

The social status of the people in these cities influence the Malay vernacular language spoken and their dialect is more understandable compared to the other Pahang sub-dialects. There are some features of the dialect of Pahang which distinguish it from other Malay language dialects. The phonological features usually happen at the end of the words, like most of other dialects. There are three phonological features of Pahang dialect, which are the placement of vowels before coronal consonants, the voiced velar friction, and the diphthong [ay] and [aw] (Hasrah, Aman , & A.H., 2010). Firstly, vowels that come before coronal consonants will go through a process called realization to [ɛ], [aɛ] dan [æ] (Hasrah, Aman , & A.H., 2010). For instance, tangan changes to tange [taŋæ̃], kanan changes to kane [kanæ], and bukit to buke [bukeʔ]. According to Wikipedia, coronal consonants are defined as consonants articulated with the flexible part of the tongue such as [n], [t], and [l]. Secondly, the alveolar trill [r] sound of standard Malay is omitted in most Malay dialects and replaced with other phonetics sound but Pahang dialect uses both forms (Hasrah, Aman , & A.H., 2010). The replacement with other phonetics forms is seen through either the lengthening of consonant or the schwa de-articulation (Hasrah, Aman , & A.H., 2010). For examples in relation to the consonant elongation, the words besar is pronounced as besa [bəsɔ:], telur as telo [təlɔː], and tidur as tido [tidɔː]. Thirdly, the diphthongs [ay] and [aw] do not exist in Pahang dialect, instead, they are monophthongized (Hasrah, Aman , & A.H., 2010). For instance, the word petai is pronounced as pete [pətɜː], pulau is uttered as pula [pulaː], and pisau is pronounced as pisa [pisaː]. Other than that,

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