The influence of Chinese idioms on the grammar of the modern Malay language

Abstract

Malaysia is a multiethnic country in Southeast Asia with a population of 33.4 million people, where Chinese make up 22.6%. This article focuses on the grammatical structures that have emerged in the Malay language (ML) as a result of Malay-Chinese language contact. The object of this study is colloquial ML. Previous research has noted that due to the influence of Chinese idioms in "low" spoken varieties of ML, new structures have emerged that break traditional Malay grammar rules. The impact of colloquial and slang forms on modern ML leads to a simplification of its grammatical constructions. It is observed that Chinese idioms primarily influence spoken ML, while in the standard or literary variant, their influence is limited to the lexical sphere. This study examines the usage of such structures in the standard and coloquial variants of modern ML. An analytical approach was applied to analyze data from prescriptive (grammars, dictionaries, textbooks) and descriptive (corpora) sources, as well as conducting experiments with ML speakers. The results of the study indicate that the previously described changes in "low" ML variants have exceeded their boundaries and are actively used in modern colloquial language both orally and in written form. The findings contribute to the analysis of the degree of simplification of grammatical structures in ML due to language contact with other idioms, helping to determine the direction of ML development in terms of the synthesis-analytic spectrum: moving away from the typical Austronesian language structure characterized by rich verbal morphology. The results of the article can be used for developing educational materials and teaching methods for Malay, as well as be useful in studying interference phenomena and language evolution processes.