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Malaysian Tamil (Tamil: மலேசியத் தமிழ் மொழி, romanized: Malēsiyat Tamiḻ Moḻi), also known as Malaya Tamil, is a local variant of the Tamil language spoken in Malaysia. [2] It is one of the languages of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin.
Tamil is an educational language in Malaysia, with more than 500 Tamil medium schools. According to Harold Schiffman, an American researcher into Malaysian Tamils, compared to Singapore, language maintenance is favourable in Malaysia. However, he notes some Tamils are shifting to English and Malay. [14]
Malaysia contains speakers of 137 living languages, [2] 41 of which are found in Peninsular Malaysia. [3] The government provides schooling at the primary level in each of the three major languages, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. Within Malay and Tamil there are a number of dialectal differences. [4]
The Malay language has many loanwords from Sanskrit, Persian, Tamil, Greek, Latin, Portuguese, Dutch, Siam (Old Thailand), Korean, Deutsch and Chinese languages such as Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka. More recently, loans have come from Arabic, English and Malay's sister languages, Javanese and Sundanese.
The maritime Tamil significance in Sumatran and Malay Peninsula trading continued for centuries and borrowings into Malay from Tamil increased between the 15th and 19th centuries due to their commercial activities. In the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company was obliged to use Tamil as part of its correspondence.
Tamil education in Malaysia started when first Tamil primary school was established in Penang in 1816. This school was operational for few years. This school was operational for few years. Later in 1870 more Tamil schools were started in Province Wellesley , North Johor , Negeri Sembilan state.
The Malay Chetty creole language (also known as Malaccan Creole Malay, Malacca Malay Creole [2] and Chitties/Chetties Malay) is a Malay-based creole spoken by the Chetties (also known as Indian Peranakans), a distinctive group of Tamil people found mainly in Malacca in Malaysia and Singapore, who have adopted Chinese and Malay cultural practices whilst also retaining their Hindu heritage.
Nonetheless, a number of words used in classical and modern Tamil are loanwords from the languages of neighbouring groups, or with whom the Tamils had trading links, including Malay (e.g. cavvarici "sago" from Malay sāgu), Chinese (for example, campān "skiff" from Chinese san-pan) and Greek (for example, ora from Greek ὥρα).