South Barisan Malay, also called Central Malay or Middle Malay, is a collection of related Malayic isolects spoken in the southwestern part of Sumatra. None of the Central Malay isolects has more than one million speakers.

Name

Traditionally, the term "Middle Malay" (a calque of Dutch term Midden-Maleisch) is used when referring to this cluster. Later, to avoid misidentification with a temporal stage of Malay language (i.e. the transition between Old Malay and Modern Malay), the term "Central Malay" is used.[2] McDonnell (2016) uses the term "South Barisan Malay" instead, referring to the southern region of the Barisan Mountains where these isolects are spoken.[3]

Varieties

Ethnologue groups together 12 isolects as part of Central Malay.[4]

• Benakat
• Bengkulu
• Besemah
• Enim
• Kikim
• Kisam
• Lematang Ulu
• Lintang
• Ogan
• Rambang
• Semendo
• Serawai

There have been few researches on individual isolects within the cluster.

References

South Barisan Malay test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator