Malagasy

Malagasy

Tongo Soa "welcome"

Introduction

Malagasy is the westernmost of the Malayo-Polynesian languages. It is spoken on the island of Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa. It is believed that it may have originated in the western portion of the Indonesian archipelago, probably on the island of Borneo. The closest language outside of Madagascar is Ma'anyan in south Borneo. The indigenous people of Madagascar, who make up some 36 tribes and are of mixed Indonesian and African stock, are also known as Malagasy.

Little is known about the earliest history of Madagascar. Africans and Indonesians reached the island in about the 5th century AD, and Indonesian immigration continuing until the 15th century. By the beginning of the 17th century there were a number of small Malagasy kingdoms. At the end of the 18th century, the Merina people conquered the other kingdoms. The Protestant London Missionary Society was welcomed. It developed a writing system for the Merina language, now known as Malagasy.

Malagasy is one of the official languages of Madagascar which became the Malagasy Republic in 1960. The other official language is French. The language is spoken by most of the island's 13 million inhabitants. It is also spoken in Comoros and Reunion islands east of Madagascar. During the French colonization of Madagascar, French became the dominant language of the island, while Malagasy was relegated to an inferior position. Today, French remains important, largely because of its international status and the fact that most of the leadership has been educated in French. Both Malagasy and French are used in official government publications, in the media, and in education.

Structure

Sound System

Stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable of a word, with the exception of words that end in ka, tra, or na. Unstressed vowels are often elided, e.g., word Malagasy with accent on the syllable -ga- is pronounced as [malgas].

The basic structure of Malagasy syllables is Consonant + Vowel. The initial consonant can be a homorganic nasal, e.g., mp, mb, nt, nd when pronounced simultaneously.

Click here to hear the pronunciation of some simple phrases in Malagasy.

Grammar

Malagasy is an agglutinative language. Words are formed from roots with basic meanings, which are combined with prefixes or suffixes to create derivatives. Malagasy words can be very long, e.g., Andrianampoinimerina, the name of a king.

Malagasy word order is usually Verb - Object - Subject. Here is a sample sentence in Malagasy:

Nametraka	ny boky	teo	ambonin'ny	latabatra	ny vehivavy
Put	the books	there	on top the	table	the woman
"The woman put the books on the table."

Vocabulary

Malagasy shares 90% of its basic vocabulary with Ma'anyan a language from 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. The original Indonesian settlers later mixed with East Africans and Arabs, among others. As a result, Malagasy has many loanwords from Arabic, e.g., names of the days of the week and months of the year, and Swahili, e.g., names of animals. A number of French and English words also entered the language in the last two centuries.

The first known Vocabulaire Anglais-Malagasy was published in 1729. An 892-page long Malagasy-English Dictionary was published by the London Missionary Society in 1885.

Here are some simple phrases in Malagasy:

Malagasy	English
manahoana	hello
veloma	good-bye
azafady	please
misaotra	thank you
eny	yes
tsia	no

Writing

The Malagasy writing system, based on the Latin alphabet, was developed by members of the London Missionary Society in 1824-25. This writing system continues to be used today.

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.

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Malagasy.

Do you recognize any words in the text?
What strikes you about the length of the words?

Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Malagasy

Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Resources

Malagasy Language Learning Resources
UCLA Language Materials Project
Less Commonly Taught Languages Course Offerings
Malagasy-English Dictionary Online
Malagasy Language Resources

How difficult is it to learn Malagasy?
There is no established difficulty rating for Malagasy. One could surmise, however, that it is a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English

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