[An-lang] Malay in broader terms

Fri Jun 3 13:01:52 UTC 2005

--- David Gil <gil at eva.mpg.de> wrote:

>>  From the above, it should be obvious that for linguistic and
> ethnographic discourse, the more limited Indonesian usage is more
> precise and hence more appropriate than the broader Malaysian one.  And
> it would also seem to be preferable on ethical grounds.  Maybe Pilipinos
> don't mind being called Malays, but many Indonesians of other
> ethnicities would find this very strange.  Using Malay as a cover terms
> for Minangkabau, Javanese, Bugis and so forth is a bit like using German
> as a cover term for Swedish, Dutch, English and so on.

This is very helpful. Thanks.

Now, on Wikipedia, I have someone who objected to the use of "ethnic
Austronesian." I plan on responding to this person over the weekend, but I
would like your or any body else's insight as well. I want to reconcile this
issue, but I feel my expertise to be inadequate. He brought up the
Indo-Europeans, but I feel that this doesn't really compare. Or does it?

This is what they wrote:

Ethnic Austronesians?
What is an ethnic Austranesian?

First of all we must outline what "ethnic" and "ethnicity" actually mean.

Then we must determine if we can honestly deem the speakers of the world's
largest spanning linguistic family as a monolithic "ethnic" group, when in fact
most so called "Austronesians" (ie speakers of Austronesian languages) are
actually belong to various unrelated TRUE "ethnic groups"; Malays, native
Taiwanese, Polynesians, etc. These groups have nothing in common with one
another, other than their current spoken languages being derived from an
ancient proto-Austronesian language spoken tens of thousands of years ago. The
Malays (of the Malay archipelago, which encompasses the Philippines, Indonesia
and Malaysia) as a group are a valid ethnic grouping, as these people's
cultures, customs, and traditional tribal beliefs - prior to the relatively
recent introduction of Abrahamic religions - are a common shared related and
intertwined heritage.

To propose the label "ethnic Austronesian" is like proposing "ethnic
Indo-European". No such thing exists, because Indo-European is a linguistic
group, even though within this linguistic group one can often find "ethnic
groupings", but which are unrelated.

That which makes an "ethnic Afghan" related to an "ethnic Bengali" and "ethnic
Hindu" - but not "ethnically" related to the examples which will be given below
- is their cultural customs (a.k.a. ethnicity), not their languages (which are
Indo-European). Likewise, that which makes an "ethnic Spaniard" related to an
"ethnic German" and an "ethnic Greek" - but not "ethnically" related to the
examples which were given above - is their shared cultural customs (a.k.a.
ethnicity) not their languages (which are also Indo-European).

"Ethnic Austronesian" is a very poor attempt at coining a new "ethnic" category
in order to avoid using "Malay" (which is a true group, whether people want to
belong to it or not). In fact, by simple definition of "ethnic" grouping,
"Ethnic Austronesian" fails to meet every criteria of what constitutes an
ethnicity; customs, codes, traditions and ancestral ties. Ancient linguistic
relationship is one of the last factors looked in defining an ethnic group, and
it is most certainly not the ONLY factor to be used when determining
"ethnicity".

Ancient linguistic relationships, are just that; an ancient linguistic
relationship. I can't stress this enough. One wouldn't propose both people from
Turkey and Japan are "ethnic Uralo-Altaics", because Turkish and Japanese are
proposed members of this linguistic family. Even if it was shown that they are
members of this family of languages, this only makes them related languages,
not an "ethnic grouping", especially not in the context of what "ethnicity"
means, and considering the unrelatedness of modern Turkish and Japanese people.
Such is the case of the Polynesians, native Taiwanese and Malays suggested to
be "ethnic Austronesians".

"Also, I reverted Malay to Austronesian. Malay is a misleading term that is
being avoided." Quoted from an Edit Summary posted by user Christopher Sundita
on 00:45, 3 Jun 2005.

The term Malay could only be "a misleading term" for the uneducated and
academically ignorant. Well, aren't we lucky that the purpose of Wikipedia (and
education in general) is to combat academic ignorance in an effort to educate
all those wishing to learn ;-)

It's counterproductive for us (as Wikipedians) to coin and propagate inaccurate
terms (like "ethnic Austronesian") instead of employing real and accurate terms
that already exist, and educate the reader as to the proper usage. In the case
of term "Malay", people should educate those that think this term has only the
one meaning of "from Malaysia", which in any case is incorrect, since something
or someone from Malaysia is "Malaysian", and not necessarily "Malay"; "Malay"
means from the Malay Archipelago, of which Malaysia is only one country,
Indonesia and the Philippines the other two). In this away we can eradicate any
limited knowledge of the term that may be responsible of its ambiguity in the
first place, instead of cluttering the world and this encyclopædia with
half-baked ideas that have taken the form of new terms.

---

--Chris Sundita

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Get on-the-go sports scores, stock quotes, news and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/mobile.html
_______________________________________________
An-lang mailing list
An-lang at anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang