Wiktionary:Votes/2016-10/Unified Malay Revote

Unified Malay Revote

Voting on Category:Malay language {{ms}}, Category:Indonesian language {{id}}, Category:Brunei language {{kxd}}, into a single Category:Malay language {{ms}}. There was a vote on a Unified Malay in December 2012-January 2013. I did not include Minangkabau, and Kedah Malay (as for now until further information can be found), because they are more divergent compared to the standardized forms of Malay. When I say standardized forms of Malay, I mean the Malaysian language of Malaysia, the Indonesian language of Indonesia, and the Brunei Language (Brunei Malay) of Brunei. What I would like to make clear here is that the code "kxd", as far as I understand, referring to Brunei Malay, refers to three dialects, 1. Brunei Malay, 2. Kedayan, and 3. Kampong Ayer. The latter two are local forms of Malay, references being this, and the first one is the standard and the local language of the capital in Bandar Seri Begawan. The reasons of merging them, in my opinion, are as follows:

1. It is indubitable that they are all the same language, but different standards. Just like European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin of China and Mandarin of Taiwan, etc. This is shown by grammar books that are used across standards, such as "A Student's Grammar of Malay and Indonesian" by Malcolm Mintz, which discusses the grammar of Malaysian and Indonesian, while pointing out certain differences in usage of a few grammatical usages.
2. It is easier to compare usage between standards if they were unified. Just like in the aforementioned book, discussion of differences in vocabulary and grammar usage of words, are so much easier if they were unified. First of all, most differences in vocabulary between Malaysia and Indonesia comes from technical terms, that have diverged, similar to the divergence of technical terms between Taiwan and China. However, due to a shared literary history, a lot are shared between the two standards. I can't find any statistics regarding the percentages, but since there are books that compile differences between Malaysia and Indonesia (such as 2000+ Indonesian - Malay Malay - Indonesian Vocabulary) such as what they have for differences in North Korean and South Korean and Mainland Mandarin and Taiwan Mandarin, it's manageable. With unified entries, one can discuss the differences in usages in the single entry.
3. It would summarize the content from superfluous doubling of entries.

So, in summary, since they're the same language with varying standards, it would summarize entries and facilitate discussions of different word usages between standards.

If this vote passes, e.g. Indonesian entries will be merged with Malay. If a term is used only in Indonesia, a label {{lb|ms|Indonesia}} will be used. Below is an example of an Indonesian term under a unified Malay, (already in use before this vote) gadis:

==Malay==

===Noun===
{{ms-noun}}

# [[maiden]], [[young]] [[girl]]
# [[virgin]]
# [[chastity]], [[virginity]]
# {{lb|ms|Indonesia}} an [[animal]] which has never laid [[egg]]s or [[reproduce]]d [[young]]

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 00:00, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 23:59, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
• Vote created: Mar vin kaiser (talk) 11:29, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Wiktionary:Votes/2012-12/Unified Malay
• Wiktionary talk:Votes/2016-10/Unified Malay Revote

Decision

Never begun, archiving. - TheDaveRoss 19:05, 13 October 2017 (UTC)