h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Bahasa Malaysia / Bahasa Melayu - A4064915
Author: ZacharyKZH - U1551673

• Selamat datang - Welcome
• Terima kasih - Thank you
• Selamat pagi - Good morning
• Selamat tengahari - Good afternoon
• Selamat petang - Good evening (note that 'Selamat petang' must not be used at night as in English. For a general greeting, use 'Salam sejahtera')
• Selamat malam - Good night
• Jumpa lagi - See you again
• Apa khabar? - How are you?
• Baik - Fine, good

This is a really interesting entry. I don't really know enough about the topic to give you many helpful comments, but did want to tell you that I enjoyed reading it.

Ah a topic close to me which I have no knowledge of! The sort of thing I love.

Perhaps you could include some form of pronunciation guide? I know most of it's said as is but not all.

Oh and I'd love 'parachutist' to be included. If I remember rightly it translates directly to English as 'man who jumps with umbrella'.

Kat

Parachute translates to "payung terjun", literally meaning diving umbrella so a parachutist becomes ahli payung terjun, that is, ahli meaning "person involved in". So, you may be right.

Let's see....

You don't need the heading of "Background" at the start I don't think.

" Bahasa Malaysia or Bahasa Melayu (generally called Malay) is the national language of Malaysia."
You could do with putting "or Bahasa Melayu (generally called Malay)" in between commas.

it belongs to the
group of languages called Austronesian

You've got some odd spacing going on here Did you accidently hit enter?

You need to change all the " "s to ' 's (I can never remember what they're called)

" BM was the lingua franca, which literally means free language in Latin"
lingua franca for what? where? You explain that BM was adopted as the lingua franca later in this paragraph. You perhaps need to look over the entire paragraph and be sure of what you are meaning to say.

"It was equivalent to English today."
What was? The need for a common language? You can't say the need for a common language was the same as English is today...no sense

"During the days of the Malacca Sultanate"
When was this?

"BM’s status as the lingua franca has been maintained until today."
It's still spoken over wide areas of South East Asia? Sure? I don't know...I just thought it was eventually sucked back more to just Malaysia and Indonesia. Which may be 'South East Asia'...oh dear well I'm confused anyway.

"this language is spoken by all the races in the countries"
I think this bit is rather clunky. Maybe take a look at the entire sentence and see if it could be put better.

"BM started of as a language"
started off?

"One such howler (joke) that occurred when due to this practice happened because dessert was translated into desert"
Something dodgy going on with this sentence!

"not forgetting the ape, orangutan which is “jungle man” or “man of the forest” in BM. Lastly, there is the word godown from gudang which is a warehouse."

I thought that in Malay it was pronounced orang-utan and in English orangutan...do you see what I mean? I'm saying it right now both ways and they ARE different...wonder what the African word for giraffe is...I mean does the country of origin usually get first dibs on animal words? Also what on EARTH is a godown?? I've NEVER heard this word before.

"Total speakers number to about 200-300 million"
There's a strange 'to' in there and this needs to be a complete sentence.

Might be worth explaining what the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka is.

"It lists all the accepted BM words in the country"
WHICH country? Also you're missing a full stop at the end

I suspect there are other things and hopefully other people will come along and point those out. Hope those were useful

Kat

Thanks for all the help but it will be hard for me to find time to correct them within this few days so don't get overly upset thinking they were ignored. It's hard to find time during weekdays.

No problem...we've got aaalll the time in the world to work on this

Kat

What worries me is that by the time the incubation period is over the entry will fall so far back down the peer review list that it will be impossible to find it without entering a couple of pages

Nah, that's not true, see --

1) every time anyone posts to the thread, it bounces back to the top of the list.

2) those of us who are commenting here are subscribed to the thread, so we don't need to hunt for it on the PeerReview page.

3) because only entries that have been in more than a week can pick, all of us scouts are used to digging around in Peer Review. Myself, I usually start at the very back and work my way forward. Or sometimes I start with entries from brand new people and work towards the ones from old-timers.

No worries, I promise!

I've just finished editing the entry. Hope some matters have been clarified


Zac

a few things:

1. perhaps a discription of what penjodoh bilangan is. Looked it up on the web, and it seems to be called " numerical coefficients". Also, other examples of penjodoh bilangan to show the variety of the language. It is not only sebuah, it could be sebilah pisau, sebatang sungai. It varies with the noun.

2. A note that in BM the verb does not conjugate with the doer... i.e. i eat, she eats, they eat, whereas in BM, saya makan, kita makan, dia makan.

3. tengahari ---> tengah hari

4. a few more common phrases. these seem to be mainly greetings.

minimy

My favourite thing about this language doesn't seem to get a mention here. It's the way they do plurals. If I remember rightly the way to indicate a plural is to say the word twice.

For example:
Street = Jalan
Streets = Jalan jalan

Interesting!

Zachary hasn't posted for more than 2 months (last posting May 29th). Is that long enough to declare him elvised? If so, I propose a move to the flea market, as it looks like there's enough to base an edited entry on.

I'll try to take it on if it does get transferred to the flea market. Am a little rusty with the language though.

minimy

Yup let's transfer this to the FM. There's definitely enough for a entry in here and we've got a prospective author already!!

Kat

Is anyone fixing this up? If you want a hand I can help - I used to learn Bahasa Indonesia in school.

Annie

I have volunteered to do it but have not started on it yet.

Will let you know once I have - which should hopefuly be by the end of this week.

Minimy

Link to updated version: A5883096

minimy