Malagasy language
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- Malagasy redirects here. For the Malagasy ethnic group, see Malagasy people. For the residents or citizens of Madagascar, see Demographics of Madagascar.
Malagasy (in French also: Malgache) is the westernmost member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family, spoken on Madagascar, where it is an official language. The Malagasy language is related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The name Malagasy is also used to refer to the indigenous people of Madagascar, who make up some 36 tribes and are of mixed Indonesian and African descent.
Malagasy shares 90% of its basic vocabulary with Maanyan, a language from the region of the Barito River in southern Borneo. This is a result of the fact that the island was first settled from about 1,500 to 2,000 years ago by Indonesians, probably mostly from Borneo. Later, the original Indonesian settlers mixed with East Africans and Arabs, amongst others.
The Malagasy language also includes borrowings from Bantu languages and Arabic. It has a highly unusual Verb Object Subject word order. Words are accented on the penultimate syllable, unless the word ends in ka, tra or na, in which case they are accented on the antepenultimate syllable. Unstressed vowels are often elided; thus fanorona is pronounced [fa'nurn] ("fa-NOORN") and Malagasy sounds like its French transliteration Malgache.
Orthography
Malagasy orthography maps rather straightforwardly into phonetics, with a few exceptions. The letter i is replaced by y at the end of words, and o is pronounced /u/.
The alphabet consists of 21 letters: a, b, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, v, y, z.
@ is used informally as a short form for amin'ny, which is a preposition followed by the definite form, meaning for instance with the.
Diacritics
Diacritics are not obligatory in standard Malagasy. They may however be used in the following ways:- ` (grave accent) shows the stressed syllable in a word. It is frequently used for disambiguation. For instance in "tanàna" (town) and "tanana" (hand), where the word that is an exception to the usual pronunciation rules (tanàna) gets an accent. Using accent on the word that follows the pronunciation rules ("tànana") is less common, mainly in dictionaries.
- ´ (acute accent) may be used in
- *very old dictionaries, along with grave accent
- *dialects such as Bara
- *French (Tuléar) and French-spelled (Antsirabé) names. Malagasy versions are Toliara/Toliary and Antsirabe.
- ^ (circumflex) is used as follows:
- *ô shows that the letter is pronunced /o/ and not /u/, in malagasified foreign words (hôpitaly) and dialects (Tôlan̈aro). In standard Malagasy, "ao" is used instead.
- *sometimes the single-letter words "a" and "e" are written "â" and "ê" but it does not change the pronunciation
- ¨ (diaeresis) is used with n̈ in dialects for a velar nasal /ŋ/. Examples are place names such as Tôlan̈aro, Antsiran̈ana, Iharan̈a, Anantson̈o. This can be seen in maps from FTM, the national institute of geodesy and cartography.
- ~ (tilde) is used in ñ sometimes, perhaps when the writer cannot produce an n̈. In Ellis' Bara dialect dictionary, it is used for velar nasal /ŋ/ as well as palatal nasal /ɲ/.
Dictionaries
The first known Vocabulaire Anglais-Malagasy was published in 1729. An 892 page Malagasy-English dictionary was published by James Richardson of the London Missionary Society in 1885. It is available as a reprint. It seems that a similar English-Malagasy dictionary was never published. Later works have been of lesser size.
- Richardson: A New Malagasy-English Dictionary. Farnborough, England: Gregg Press 1967, 892 p. ISBN 0576116076
- Diksionera Malagasy-Englisy. Antananarivo: Trano Printy Loterana 1973, 103 p.
- An Elementary English-Malagasy Dictionary. Antananarivo: Trano Printy Loterana 1969, 118 p.
- English-Malagasy Phrase Book. Antananarivo: Editions Madprint 1973, 199 p. (Les Guides de Poche de Madagasikara.)
- Paginton, K: English-Malagasy Vocabulary. Antananarivo: Trano Printy Loterana 1970, 192 p.
- Rakibolana Malagasy. Fianarantsoa: Régis RAJEMISOA - RAOLISON 1995, 1061 p.
References
- Matthew E. Hules, et al (2005). The Dual Origin of the Malagasy in Island Southeast Asia and East Africa: Evidence from Maternal and Paternal Lineages. American Journal of Human Genetics, 76:894-901, 2005.
See also
External links
- [Ethnologue report for "Plateau" Malagasy], a major dialect of Malagasy.
- [Malagasy - English Dictionary]
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