International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Persian and Malay: 1000 Words in Common
Abolfazl Shirban Sasi

Abstract
Today, varieties of the Malay language are spoken by more than two hundred million people, mostly in Indonesia and Malaysia. Also, more than one hundred million people speak Persian dialects in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. Throughout centuries, Malay has been influenced by other languages such as Arabic, Dutch, Portuguese, and English. Likewise, Persian has borrowed many vocabularies from Arabic and European languages. Since words are one of the most important elements in mastering any language, a concise classification of the common Persian and Malay words has vast pedagogical implications. In this study, more than 1000 Malay words that were recited to 64 Iranian university students on various occasions were recognized by them to be almost completely homophonic to Persian words. Most of these common terms were then classified into five main categories the biggest of which is those words which have exactly the same meaning, and almost identical pronunciation.

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