In the process of acquiring my languages, I have noticed a few similarities between them – even though English, Malay, and Arabic are not closely related! This matter sparks curiosity in me to figure why do languages sometimes share a word that sounds the same? And what is the term for it?

Apparently, these are known as loanwords! It is a term to describe words that we adopted from other languages.

For instance, there are words from Malay that have been adopted into the English language such as “Orang Utan”, and “Satay,” and the names of local fruits, like “Rambutan”, and “Durian”! We can also see this in words like “Kopi” which means “Coffee” in Malay. This means English has borrowed Malay words, and Malay has borrowed English words too!

Similarly, the Malay language has also taken a few words from Arabic such as “kerusi” in Malay, which sounds very similar to “kursiyun” in Arabic. They both carry the same meaning: “chair”. English has also borrowed from Arabic over the centuries, with words like “algebra”.

So you can see, where all of these languages come together in multilingual communities, they behave like good neighbours loaning their words like linguistic cups of gula melaka*!

*gula melaka: palm sugar (Malay)