South Barisan Malay
{{short description|Austronesian spoken language in Indonesia}}
{{Infobox language
|name=South Barisan Malay
|altname=Central Malay
|states=Indonesia
|region=Bengkulu
South Sumatra
Lampung
|speakers={{sigfig|1.59|2}} million
|ref=e18
|date=2000
|dialects=Benakat
Bengkulu
Besemah
Enim
Lematang Ulu
Lintang
Ogan
Rambang
Semende
Serawai
|familycolor=Austronesian
|fam2=Malayo-Polynesian
|fam3=Malayo-Chamic
|fam4=Malayic
|map=Barisan lects.svg
|mapcaption=The distribution of Barisan lects across southern Sumatra.
|iso3=pse
|glotto=high1292
|glottoname=(partial)
|glottorefname=South Barisan Malay
}}
South Barisan Malay, also called Central Malay or Middle Malay, is a collection of closely related Malayic isolects spoken in the southwestern part of Sumatra. None of them has more than one million speakers.
Name
Traditionally, Malayic lects in southern Sumatra are divided based on river shed and microethnic boundaries, regardless of actual similarities and differences between them. Linguists originally used the term Middle Malay (a calque of Dutch {{Lang|nl|Midden-Maleisch}}) when referring to the closely related lects in the Pasemah-Serawai cultural region. Later, to avoid misidentification with a temporal stage of Malay language (i.e. the transition between Old Malay and Modern Malay), the term Central Malay began to be used.{{Cite book |last=Adelaar |first=K. Alexander |title=Proto-Malayic: The Reconstruction of its Phonology and Parts of its Lexicon and Morphology |date=1992 |publisher=Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University |series=Pacific Linguistics, Series C, no. 119 |location=Canberra |hdl=1885/145782 |hdl-access=free}} McDonnell (2016) uses the geographic term South Barisan Malay instead, referring to the southern region of the Barisan Mountains where these lects are spoken.{{Cite thesis |last=McDonnell |first=Bradley James |title=Symmetrical Voice Constructions in Besemah: A Usage-based Approach |date=2016 |degree=PhD |publisher=University of California, Santa Barbara |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8mg5k6ws }} Meanwhile, Glottolog uses the term Central Malay instead to refer Malayic varieties around the strait of Malacca and South China Sea (e.g. Deli Malay, Riau Malay, or Sarawak Malay), grouped under Greater Riau–Johoric branch.{{cite web|url=https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/mala1479|title=Central Malay (mala1479)|website=glottolog.org|access-date=2025-04-18}}
Varieties
McDowell & Anderbeck (2020) classified South Barisan lects into 2 major dialect clusters, namely 1) Oganic and 2) Highland.{{cite book |last1=McDowell |first1=Jonathan |last2=Anderbeck |first2=Karl |year=2020 |title=The Malay Lects of Southern Sumatra |series=JSEALS Special Publication |volume=7 |publisher=University of Hawai'i Press |hdl=10524/52473}}
{{tree list}}
- Oganic
- Ogan
- Rambang
- Enim
- Highland
- Bengkulu
- Besemah
- Lematang Ulu
- Lintang
- Semende
- Benakat
- Serawai
- Kaur (ISO 639-3: vkk)
- Pekal (ISO 639-3: pel)
{{Tree list/end}}
This classification was partially adopted (with the exception of Pekal) by Glottolog in its latest version (4.8).{{cite web |last1=Hammarström |first1=Harald |last2=Forkel |first2=Robert |last3=Haspelmath |first3=Martin |last4=Bank |first4=Sebastian |year=2023 |title=South Sumatra Malay |url=https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/high1292 |website=Glottolog 4.8 |location=Leipzig, Germany |publisher=Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology |accessdate=25 December 2023}} All ISO 639-3 language codes for South Barisan Malay varieties were merged into [pse] in 2007 by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, with the exceptions of [vkk] for Kaur and [pel] for Pekal. The old codes ([bke], [eni], [lnt], [ogn], [sdd], [srj]) are no longer in active use, but still have the meaning assigned to them when they were established in the Standard.
References
{{reflist}}
{{languages of Indonesia}}
{{incubator|pse}}