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 when referring to the closely related lects in the Pasemah-Serawai cultural region. Later, to avoid misidentification with a temporal stage of Malay language, the term Central Malay began to be used. McDonnell uses the geographic term South Barisan Malay instead, referring to the southern region of the Barisan Mountains where these lects are spoken. Meanwhile, Glottolog uses the term Central Malay instead to refer Malayic varieties around the strait of Malacca and South China Sea, grouped under Greater Riau–Johoric branch.

Varieties

McDowell & Anderbeck Oganic and 2) Highland.
This classification was partially adopted by Glottolog in its latest version. All ISO 639-3 language codes for South Barisan Malay varieties were merged into in 2007 by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, with the exceptions of for Kaur and for Pekal. The old codes are no longer in active use, but still have the meaning assigned to them when they were established in the Standard.