World Language Map

Where is Standard Malay spoken?

Standard Malay (bahasa Melayu Standard) is an Austronesian language, spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei. It is marked on the map by a ringed point.

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The filter only changes what is drawn. Tap the map to list every language at a spot, whichever family is shown. You can also pick any family from its own page.

Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Standard Malay is spoken

Standard Malay is spoken in 4 countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Malaysia75%25,923,600
Indonesia4.6%12,951,852
Singapore14%843,984
Brunei98%482,062

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

Standard Malay has no area on the map because no open area map covers it. The ringed point is the position Glottolog gives for the language.

How many people speak Standard Malay?

Wikidata holds no speaker count for this language. The table above has rough per-country estimates from Unicode CLDR.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Standard Malay sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Standard Malay as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Austronesian
  2. Malayo-Polynesian
  3. Malayo-Chamic
  4. Malayic
  5. Nuclear Malayic
  6. Standard Malay-Indonesian
  7. Standard Malay

Related languages

Other languages in the Standard Malay-Indonesian group:

More about Standard Malay

Codes: ISO 639-3 zsm, Glottolog stan1306. Glottolog macroarea: Eurasia.

Questions about Standard Malay

Where is Standard Malay spoken?

Standard Malay is spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei. Unicode CLDR puts it at 75% of the population of Malaysia, which is about 25,923,600 people. On the map it is shown as a single point, because no open area map covers it.

Which language family is Standard Malay in?

Glottolog places Standard Malay in the Austronesian family, in the branch Malayo-Polynesian, Malayo-Chamic, Malayic, Nuclear Malayic and Standard Malay-Indonesian.

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