[An-lang] Malay in broader terms

[David Gil]

A quick comment on Chris' latest message.  (I'm actually not sure
whether the words to which I'm responding are Chris' or those of his
correspondent, but since ideas should be discussed without reference to
who proposes them that's fine.)

>"Malay" (which is a true group, whether people want to
>belong to it or not).
>
I think people's professed self-allegience is in fact one of several
factors that determine ethnicity.

> 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";
>
Quite right: A Malaysian can be Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan, etc.

>"Malay" means from the Malay Archipelago, of which Malaysia is only one country,
>Indonesia and the Philippines the other two).
>
Quite wrong:  a numerical majority of ethnic Malays are actually from
Sumatra, not from the Malay archipelago.  (And nobody, to the best of my
knowledge, has argued that the Malays in Sumatra are of peninsular
origin; if anything, the opposite direction of migration, from Sumatra
to the peninsula, is one that is more historically attested.)

David


--
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-3550321
Fax: 49-341-3550119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/



_______________________________________________
An-lang mailing list
An-lang at anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/an-lang