The Systemic Rules of Malay Standard Borrowing from Arabic: Guidelines for Linguists and Translators

Abstract

Borrowing has been an important process in the development of the Malay language. Malay has a great number of borrowed terms from a variety of languages, such as Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Dutch, Hindi, Javanese, Siamese, Tamil, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and English. Among these languages, Arabic is one of the main sources of Malay borrowing. This research is a descriptive study of Malay borrowing from Arabic. It aims to produce a model of the systemic rules of standard Malay borrowing from the Arabic language. Data for this research were obtained from Kamus Dewan, the main reference for Malay lexicon. The data, then, were analysed manually based on their trends and patterns. The result of the study shows that there are several trends implemented in transferring Arabic words into Malay. This study aims to become a useful guideline for linguists and translators in borrowing new terms from Arabic.