Sarawak Malay (Standard Malay: Bahasa Melayu Sarawak or Bahasa Sarawak, Jawi: بهاس ملايو سراوق‎, Sarawak Malay: Kelakar Sarawak) is a Malayic language native to the State of Sarawak. It is a common language used by natives of Sarawak^[1] and also as the important mother tongue for the Sarawakian Malay people.

This Malay variant is related to Bruneian Malay. The Sarawakian Malay language also bears strong similarities with the West Kalimantan Malay language around Sanggau, Sintang and Sekadau in the northern part of the West Kalimantan province of Indonesia.

According to Asmah Haji Omar (1993), Sarawak Malay can be divided into three dialects which are:^[2]

• Kuching
• Saribas
• Sibu

Sarawak Malay has features that are not found in Standard Malay, of which some of them are closer to colloquial Indonesian:^[2]

• Sarawak Malay has only one diphthong which is /oi̯/ unlike Standard Malay which has three which are /oi̯, ai̯, au̯/.
• The diphthongs /ai̯, au̯/ in Standard Malay correspond to monophthongs /e, o/ in Sarawak Malay so pandai /pan.dai̯/ and pulau /pu.lau̯/ in Standard Malay are [pan.de] and [pu.lo] in Sarawak Malay.
• Verbs conjugated in the "agent focus" sense (e.g. biar > membiar) conjugate differently in Sarawak Malay:
  • In Sarawak Malay, the initial consonant in a syllable coda of the conjugated form of the word (e.g. the initial middle 'm' in memberi) in Standard Malay is the initial consonant in Sarawak Malay. For example, Standard Malay mencari [məɲ.t͡ʃa.ri] is nyari [ɲ̩a.ɣi] in Sarawak Malay because the 'n' in mencari is a [ɲ]. This is also found in how memberi [məm.bə.ri] is meri [mə.ɣi] in Sarawak Malay because of the middle 'm' in memberi.
• In the dialects of Kuching and Sibu, open-ended final /a/ is an [a] like in Baku Standard Malay but in the dialect of Saribas, it is instead an [o] so ada /ada/ is [a.da] in the Kuching and SIbu dialects and in Baku Standard Malay but is pronounced as [a.do] in the Saribas dialect.
• In Sarawak Malay, /r/ is a uvular or velar fricative ([ʁ] and [ɣ] respectively), unlike in Standard Malay where it varies between an alveolar trill [r], an alveolar tap [ɾ], and a postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠].

Sarawak Malay has a rich vocabulary of which many words, while also found in Standard Malay, have completely different meanings.^[3]

The numbers of Sarawak Malay differ a bit from their Standard Malay counterparts.^[4]

The pronouns too differ quite significantly,^[5] with 1st and 2nd personal pronouns (both singular and plural) are both derived from 1st person plural pronouns (kami and kita in Standard Malay).

Below is a non-exhaustive list of lexical differences between Standard Malay and Sarawak Malay.^[6][7]

Many of the words used in Sarawak Malay nowadays were borrowed from many languages such as English. Some English words that have been borrowed and have undergone significant pronunciation changes are as follows:

The word formation rules of Sarawak Malay are very different from those of the standard Malay language. Without prior exposure, most West Malaysians have trouble following Sarawakian conversations. Sabahan is also different from Sarawak Malay, however they do share some lexicon, such as the word Bah, which is used to stress a sentence. E.g.: Don't do like that - "Iboh polah kedak ya bah." It is similar in use to "lah" in Singlish and in West Malaysia. E.g.: Don't do like that 'lah'. Some words in Sarawakian Malay have a similar pronunciation of ai as ei, as in some districts of Perak: serai > serei, kedai > kedei. Some Sarawakian Malay verbs have a final glottal stop after a vowel or in place of final /r/: kena > kenak, air > aik, beri > berik. like in the Aboriginal Malay languages of West Malaysia.

Many words in Sarawak Malay have diverged from their original pronunciations and some are totally different. Some examples include:

Contemporary usage of Sarawak Malay includes contemporary Malay words or incorporated from other languages, spoken by the urban speech community, which may not be familiar to the older generation. E.g.: SMS language. E.g.:

TVS, a regional television broadcaster serving Sarawak from the state government-owned Sarawak Media Group has programming tailored in the language.^[10]

• Kaipuleohone has an archived notes on Sarawak Malay

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