How Different Are Indonesian and Malay?!

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Well, modern Indonesian and modern Malay (including the Malaysian, Bruneian, and Singaporean varieties) all developed from a slightly older form of Malay. Indonesian was the Malay language until 1928 when Indonesian nationalists gave it the name "Indonesian" so that it could help unify their nation.

Since then, Indonesian has developed in one direction, and Malay in other countries has developed in another direction, so that they are no longer exactly the same. But not so much time has passed, so they are very similar to each other, especially in their standard forms. Whether or not they are a single language is up for debate, and depends partly on whether you focus mainly on the standard languages or spoken dialects.

Special thanks to Irfan Radzman for his Malay samples and valuable information, and Enrile Fariz for his Indonesian samples and feedback!

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Video chapters:

00:00 Introduction
00:47 The historical connection between Malay and Indonesian
01:58 Historical spelling differences between Malay and Indonesian
02:32 Different colonial loanwords in Malay and Indonesian
05:28 Other differences in everyday vocabulary
10:21 Informal Malay and Indonesian: Sentence 1 breakdown
14:20 Informal Malay and Indonesian: Sentence 2 breakdown
16:10 Final comments
17:18 The Question of the Day

Music

Main: “Gisele Revisited” By South London Hi-Fi
Outro: “Time Illusionist” by Asher Fulero.

[qaiyyumzainal]

The best thing about us:
Most Malaysian learn Bahasa Indonesia through Sinetron.
While, most Indonesian learn Bahasa Melayu through Upin Ipin.

[achilleslee_]

Indonesian = American English
Malaysian = British English
Tagalog = German

[suryadhiez]

Even if you are native Indonesian or Malaysian, to make this video with such accurate information it's gunna take a lot of time, hardwork and research.
Knowing the fact that it's made by non Indonesian nor malaysian, it gets me mesmerized.

And you do it to other languages as well...

Imagining how much effort you've put on making this channel...

Hat off to you sir....

As native speaker of BI myself here's my answer to your question..

I think both BI and BM are standardized languages of the same root of language which is traditional malay spoken by malay ethnic around johor-riau region.

But both BI and BM have developed in different ways since colonialism.

[adamtokyo]

'Selamat datang di...' in Indonesian is probably influenced by Dutch, 'Welkom in...', whereas 'Selamat datang ke...' in Malay is probably a loan translation of English 'Welcome to...'.

[ilovecats]

I love this comment section where Indonesian and Malaysian aren't arguing with each other

[DespicableGru]

As a Filipino, I'm so jealous with everyone from Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore because they can understand each other when they use Malay or Indonesian. While we share many words with our neighbors, we just can't understand them. 😕

[katonrahmudi]

Ya ampun aku ganteng BANGET mirip KIM MINGYU🎉🎉

[thankuslay]

The influence of colonization really left the distinctive differences towards Indonesia and Malaysia.
1. •Malaysia uses 12-hour-time system
- 05:00 pagi (05:00 am)
- 05:00 petang (05:00 pm)
•Indonesia uses 24-hour-time system
- 05:00 (05:00 am)
- 17:00 (05:00 pm)

2. •Malaysia uses ''decimal point''
- $ 1.5 (one point five dollar)
- 1, 000, 000.00 (one million)
•Indonesia uses ''decimal comma''
- $ 1, 5
- 1.000.000, 00 (one million)

3.• Malaysia uses English spelling
A = ay, B = bee, C = see, D = dee
•Indonesia uses Dutch spelling but some has changed
A = uh, B = bhé, C = ché (old ''sé), D = dhé

[muhamadhaziz]

Indonesia🇮🇩 itu ibarat abang bagi kami di Malaysia🇲🇾.. Brunei🇧🇳 itu ibarat adik bongsu kami.. walaupun kami sudah bawa haluan masing2.. namun kami tetap dari 1 akar❤️

[rpgandhorrorloverhans]

Indonesia and Malaysia remind me of British and United States, where Malay is like British with the thick classic royal accent and Indonesia is more like USA with simple and modern tone.
Both are great

[pramardianto]

For the songs lyrics, it's 99% same so we can understand each other songs.

[dioosptr]

Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore :
🗣️😄😆😊

Philippines : 🗿

[kangCiml]

i am indonesian, when i am travelling to malaysia is quite funny because i used bahasa indonesia to commucation with malaysian and we do understand what we are talking about and the point of our conversation it self.

i love malaysia, we have so many similarity ..

[ma.ceciliacruz]

I'm a Filipino and learning Indonesian because I would love to converse with my friend using their language. I just realized that if I succeed being fluent in Indonesian, just few more practice and I will definitely understand Malay too.

[Mustafa-Kamal-Satar]

I was in US when my Korean friends were shocked when I spoke to my Indonesian friends in Malay (which they understood) & they spoke to me in Indonesian (which I understood). so a Korean a friend went like "Hey! You both seem to speak same language, are your languages same?", she was surprised. So we told her it's like South Koreans talking to North Koreans in same language, no big deal..

[sonyaputri]

I'm an Indonesian, born in Sumatra so I'm quite familiar with original Malay words (people in Sumatra island use Malay dialects, too besides Bahasa Indonesia). We Sumatran can understand Malaysian Malay more easily than Indonesian people from other regions.

Sumatra's regional dialects are heavily influenced by Malay dialects because we have the same root language with Malaysia. Many Malaysian Malay words are still used in daily basis in Sumatra but not in bahasa Indonesia... because bahasa Indonesia also adopt the words from other influence like Javanese, Arabics, Sankrit, Dutch, Chinese, Papua, Maluku, Sulawesi, Kalimantan etc. Bahasa Indonesia is influenced by so many languages.... only that Sumatra's Malay being the root of it but bahasa Indonesia is still very very diverse language, combination of so many foreign countries words and region words.

I can say this video is very very well made. 👍

[AllDaGoodUsernamesWereTaken]

Actually not all Malaysians pronounce ending a vowels as the "e" sound. It depends what state you're from

[_darysatriaparamadika]

Dasar bahasa Indonesia baku adalah bahasa Melayu Riau.Dalam perkembangannya, ia mengalami perubahan akibat penggunaannya sebagai bahasa kerja di lingkungan administrasi kolonial dan berbagai proses pembakuan sejak awal abad ke-20. Penamaan "bahasa Indonesia" diawali sejak dicanangkannya Sumpah Pemuda pada 28 Oktober 1928, untuk menghindari kesan "imperialisme bahasa" apabila nama bahasa Melayu tetap digunakan.Proses ini menyebabkan berbedanya bahasa Indonesia saat ini dari varian bahasa Melayu yang digunakan di Riau dan kepulauan maupun Semenanjung Malaya. Hingga saat ini, bahasa Indonesia merupakan bahasa yang hidup, yang terus menghasilkan kata-kata baru, baik melalui penciptaan maupun penyerapan dari bahasa daerah dan bahasa asing.

[IlhamyAhmad]

Malaysia and Indonesia brotherhood will remain forever

[danipolyglot]

Indonesian and Malay similarities and differences can be compared to the same as it's in Portuguese and Spanish to me. These are beautiful languages, I'm learning Indonesian now and after it maybe I can learn Malay faster. Thanks for the great video!