Words from Malay
4 words in Curio passed through Malay on their way into English.
About Malay
Malayan group of the Austronesian family; a pluricentric macrolanguage · spoken today
Where
Islands of Maritime Southeast Asia and the Malay Peninsula → official language in Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, with Indonesian as the standard form in Indonesia
When
Dates unknown
Speakers
77M
as of 2007
Native speakers, Wikidata figure for 2007
Family path
- Malay
- PortugueseFrench
- English
Where it came from
Malay is an Austronesian language of the Malayan group and the ethnic language of the Malays. Its classical form, also called Court Malay, was the literary standard of the pre-colonial Malacca and Johor Sultanates. Several trade and creole languages, such as Ambonese Malay, are based on a lingua franca derived from Classical Malay.
Source: Wikipedia
The words, A to Z
- amok
There's a word for the moment someone stops holding back entirely, and it sailed into English from across the sea.
- gingham
That checkered picnic-blanket fabric might get its name from a town, or from a word meaning 'apart.'
- ketchup
The world's favorite tomato sauce started out as a fish sauce from Southeast Asia, and didn't have a single tomato in sight.
- sago
This starchy staple carried its own name across oceans before it ever reached an English table.