Is Malay language difficult to learn?

Question

I live where Malay is spoken quite a lot and am thinking of starting Malay language courses. However, I do not want to start if this language is too complex (in terms of grammar - such as diffucult vern and noun conjungation, intricate verb tenses etc).
Just to give an idea of my understanding of "difficult", here are some examples of languages I learned:
English - easy,
French, Spanish, Japanese - medium,
Russian - difficult.
I am natively an indoeuropean language speaker. Thanks for your thoughts!

Answer 1

Malay like Indonesian language is tricky.

Very very easy for the following reason:
1. You read what you see. The vowels and consonants remain the same. e.g 'saya' 'papaya' 'tanah' Unlike in English a vowel like "u" for example is read differently as in "put" "but" "pure" or a consonants th as in 'tough' 'thought' 'dough'. English in this sense is too much to learn.

2. Tenses
Tenses in Malay and Indonesian is marked by Advebs of time e.g. tomorrow, today, in 1990 etc etc. The VERB remain the same. eg. Saya PERGI (go) ke gereja setiap minggu
(I go to church every sunday ). Saya pergi ke gereja kemarin (I went to church yesterday). The word go doesnt change at all.

3. Prular vs singular: No such a thing as to add 's' or 'es' or other irregular plural forms in English grammar e.g. potatoes, books, children etc. In malay, you only need to repeat the word e.g. anak (child).. anak-anak (children). rumah (house) rumah-rumah (houses). But if you dont want to repeat the noun, you simply need to add number eg. 4 rumah (four houses)

Basically you can survive the language if you have enough vocabularies. And people will understand you easily.

The tricky part is the conjugation. Very hard to master because there are many exeptions and loose. Hardly fixed formula as in Latin based language (e.g. french, italy etc) Just like english you've got may exceptions. Malay has more.

Generally speaking I would say it is easy to learn Malay

Answer 2

I find English easy too, as I'm a native speaker of English.
Anyways, Malay is easy to learn but difficult to master. I've learnt Malay for 12 years and I got a B in my A Levels for it. Getting an A in A Level Malay is pretty tough, you have to be able to speak it much much much better than an average Malay. Considering I'm not Malay, I think what I've achieved is alright. But I know if I had put in much more effort, I would've done better.
In essence, if you keep working on your Malay proficiency, you will do well. Don't be daunted by the difficult aspects of Malay, just study harder and you'll be able to speak Malay in no time.

I would say it might be easier than Italian and French (I have learnt beginner's Italian and French).

Answer 3

I speak fluent Malay and it is definitely easy to learn. It is a very new language and many of the words are borrowed from other languages (in modern Malay, mostly are adapted from English). Their writing is in Roman script and just as AQ had mentioned, is only useful if you're planning to visit Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.

Answer 4

Malay will realy appreciate you if you do speak Malay with their own accent, even it's not widely spoken, but once you learn it, Malaysian will really appreciate it since you've tried it and there's just a little people who speak standard Malay which is a bit same Indonesian, makes us like.. uhm okay you speak malay. kbye

Answer 5

Malay it's not difficult at all, in fact it's one of World's easiest languages. I'm also an indo-european language speaker, and it took me about 6 months to be able of basic communication and about 2 years to become fluent. And I didn't even put any effort in it, just picked it up from the street.

But although Malay is an easy language you might rethink learning it because it's only useful if you're planning to come to Malaysia, Indonesia or Brunei.

Answer 6

I m malay and I m not fluent! Buts its frikin easy. I m britain and american fluent!!!

Answer 7

its very simple, English is way way tougher. i had a rough time learning English, but i found Arabic tough too, just my opinion.