On Monday, 4 April 2005 01:21:24 UTC+8, Aku Konsisten wrote:

I agree with you. I speak and write in Bahasa Melayu all the time, Bahasa Melayu Kampungan that is! All my friends who speak Bahasa Indonesia also understand my dialect. In fact I think Bahasa Melayu Kampungan should be the main language used in the Phillipines, Malaysia and Indonesia, just to name a few. Forget about Bahasa Indonesia, it's too complicated! For instance, if you want to tell your maid to go to the market all what you need to say is, "Pergi ke pasar" in Bahasa Melayu Kampungan. But in Bahasa Indonesia you would have to say, "Kamu mula-mula harus keluar pintu belakang, lalu kamu belok kekiri dan jalan lurus kira2x 5 menit sampai kamu melihat batu besar disebelah kanan. Setelah sampai disitu kamu harus menengok ke kanan dan kekiri untuk memastikan bahwa tidak ada ojek yg bisa menabrak kamu dan kalau kamu melihat jalanan sudah sepi sekali barulah kamu boleh menyebrang jalan. Pasar itu letaknya diseberang jalan." You see how complicated Bahasa Indonesia is, just to impress people, that's all..!

"L Leed" <lluck98@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1112514275.179102.63630@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

I've been studying Bahasa Melayu (Bahasa means "language") for a month
now, and I was surprised at how many similar words it has to Filipino,
even though the two are mutually unintelligible.

Both are Austro-polynesian languages, but Bahasa Melayu is one of the
major world languages (300 million speakers in a few years and is one
of the fastest growing languages) and is the major language of several close neighbors of the Philippines (who also happen to be ethnically
the same us as Malays) such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, etc.

Which got me to wondering whether the Philippines should ditch Tagalog,
and equate "Filipino" with "Bahasa Melayu" (much like "Bahasa
Indonesia" is really just Bahasa Melayu with some differences due to foreign borrowings).

Some advantage to this:

1. We automatically align ourselves with our closest neighbors and brothers/sisters - those from ASEAN

2. We automatically become bilingual in two of the major world
languages (Bahasa Melayu and English)

3. We get rid of the nagging feeeling by non-Tagalogs that they are
being dominated by the Tagalogs because of the fact Filipino=Tagalog.

4. Filipinos will be able to travel from one end of southeast asia (Malaysia) to the other (Irian Jaya in Papua) and be able to speak
fluently to all inhabitants in that area.

5. Bahasa Melayu is extremely simple in grammar, but rich in literary tradition (it is much more ancient than Tagalog). It is MUCH simpler to learn, which will encourage foreigners in the country to learn it (my mother picked up Bahasa Indonesia in a few months in indonesia) and encourage its use as lingua franca even in the furthest reaches of Philippines.

Any thoughts on this?

a little correction, first of all...the language that you used, wasn't exactly Bahasa Indonesia (Malay based creole language that is close to Malay), but... you were using Eastern Malaysian way of speaking, even though you have used some Indonesian
typical words, but the language you delivered was having a Malay nuance, rather than Indonesian...

and second of all, you ARE NOT directly translate the sentence "pergi ke pasar" which means "to go to the market", you are talking non-sense about how someone would get into the market...(you see, as the Indonesian native, I could directly translate that,
because the way we express the language is also as simple as what you have called "Melayu Kampungan"...?) really, haha??!

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