Let me start with a disclaimer: I'm a Malay from the Bugis ethnic. I think it should be Malay.
Bahasa Malaysia was designed to unite Malaysian, the multi-racial and multi-cultural people of Malaysia. We are the most united and harmonious people in the world for at least the past 50 years. We are united with a common language, the Malay language. Bahasa Malaysia is referring to the Malay language, the language spoken by many ethnic groups in South-East Asia including Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Singapore. The people of many ethnic groups that speak Malay would like to be known as Malay. Article 152 states that the national language for Malaysia is Malay. In native Malay we call the Malay language Bahasa Melayu.
Here in the Drupal Localization website where the communication medium is English I think it is more appropriate to refer to the Malay language as Malay, not as Bahasa Malaysia which can be misguided as the language for Malaysia only. I warmly welcome all contributors from Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, Southern Thailand, Southern Indian regions, South Africa and those from all over the world who speak Malay and fluent in Malay.
Comments
IMHO, we are aiming for
IMHO, we are aiming for Bahasa Malaysia. Malay is a major language which generally refer to a wide range of "dialect" including Indonesian, Melayu Brunei, Melayu Kelantan, Melayu Kedah, etc., which are close but different. When we put Bahasa Malaysia, that's our exact coverage - standard Malay in Malaysia; not Indonesian, not Kelantanese Malay, etc. Using the term Malay will be even more confusing, IMO.
Excerpts from Wikipedia:
1. In Malaysia, the term Bahasa Malaysia was in use until the 1990s, when most academics and government officials reverted to "Bahasa Melayu," used in the Malay version of the Federal Constitution. According to Article 152 of the Federal , Malay is the official language of Malaysia. "Bahasa Kebangsaan" (National Language) was also used at one point during the 1970s. At present day, the government is referring to the language as Bahasa Malaysia again.
2. In Malaysia, the standard language is called Bahasa Malaysia "Malaysian language".
In ISO 639-1 Code ms is
In ISO 639-1 Code ms is referring to malay and not Bahasa Malaysia. There is no code for Bahasa Malaysia in the list. This translation project is using ms code. Drupal.org may not be happy with this situation because we are not adhere to standard.
I believe the government of Malaysia cannot be above the Federal Constitution. There is no reference to Bahasa Malaysia what so ever in Article 152. The term Bahasa Malaysia is illegal. The excerpts from Wikipedia is questionable and cannot be taken as definitive.
Malay is the language of Johor-Riau and not a dialect. Kelantanese is a dialect of Malay. Kelantanese can speak both Kelantanese and Malay. Do you know that Javanese is not a Malay dialect? Javanese is a major language in Indonesia. In fact there is an ISO 639-1 Code for Javanese which is jv. And there is a separate code for Indonesian language which is id. I'm not referring to Malay dialects here. I'm referring to the Malay language with ms code which we are using here. People who speak Malay dialects can also speak Malay.
Please do not confuse ourselves with this. I'm a Johorean and I speak Malay language and not any dialect of Malay. If Malay is Bahasa Malaysia then my mother tongue is damned. It does so for the people of Johor, Selangor and Riau. But that is not the point here. What you are referring to Bahasa Malaysia is actually Malay. Please don't be offended with my comment and don't take me as racist. I just want to be firmed with definition.
You are contradicting
You are contradicting yourself there. So you are saying "Malay is Bahasa Malaysia", but "Bahasa Malaysia is not Malay". So you would like to expand the translation coverage and contribute to cater for Malay Brunei, Malay Singapore, etc inside Johor-Riau, which is ms? If we are, then why are we talking about Malaysia Constitution? Malay is the major language, Javanese is a Malay language variety, Indonesian is a Malay dialect, the point they get their own ISO just indication they have a big user group.
For what I care, call it whatever you like, Bahasa, BM, Malay... We cannot please everyone, and we all know these arguments will go no where as evidence in Malaysia. We also cannot cater for regional Malay as they are different from country to country, and we have no language expert that cover them all. Instead of wasting time and energy arguing, it is best channel this into doing the translation for the benefit of all. Even if you sew a diamond into the name, it is pointless if no translation work is done.
You are not reading my
You are not reading my English text carefully. I'd never said that "Malay is Bahasa Malaysia". Now I'm very concern about your translation from English to Malay. If we can't settle down on this one with the obvious facts then I wonder how do we deal with thousands of terms in this translation project. I bet we won't get enough diamonds to make this work glitters. Your Malay knowledge is shallow. When you said "we have no language expert" you are not looking around hard enough. Make no mistake I won't stop at this.
Javanese are not Malay
Hey asshole, what did you mean by saying "Javanese is Malay variety" huh? I bet you never come to Java island, even you never heard Javanese language yet. I tell you, "Javanese is absolutely not Malay". We had our own high culture, beliefs, and rich language that "not related" to Malay. I told you again, Javanese are not Malay, Javanese are really different from Malay according to language, culture, beliefs, work ethic, manners, and DNA are very different even Javanese are not related to Malay. I really "HATE" when Malaysian & Singaporean Malays always CLAIMs that Javanese are Malay, I told you before: Javanese are different and "absolutely not" Malay
Remember that!
ms == Malay
language/politics/race things aside, if you look into locale module in Drupal code, "ms" indeed for "Bahasa Melayu" or Malay so I agree with chelah that this just make things confusing. Unless someone provide a patch so that locale module identify ms as Bahasa Malaysia (which I personally think is wrong), we better stay with "Bahasa Melayu". Even better if this project can use ms_MY if we really want to go Bahasa Malaysia route. That way if someone later came up and want to work on "ms" translation, we don't have to go into this issue again.