Information about Malagasy Language

Malagasy
Spoken in:	Madagascar, Comoros, Réunion, Mayotte
Total speakers:	17 million
Language family:	}}}  Malayo-Polynesian   Borneo-Philippines    Barito     Malagasy}}}
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	mg
ISO 639-2:	mlg
ISO 639-3:	mlg

Malagasy (in French also: Malgache) is the national language of Madagascar.

History

Malagasy has a fairly limited relationship to nearby African languages, instead being the westernmost member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family, a fact noted as long ago as the eighteenth century. It is related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and more closely with the South-east Barito group of languages spoken in Borneo. Malagasy shares much of its basic vocabulary with Maanyan, a language from the region of the Barito River in southern Borneo. This indicates that Madagascar was first settled by Austronesian people from this area, though it is not clear precisely when or why such colonisation took place. Later, the original Austronesian settlers must have mixed with East Africans and Arabs, amongst others.

The Malagasy language also includes borrowings from Bantu languages, Swahili and Arabic, as well as from French (the former colonial rulers of Madagascar) and English (spoken by 18th century pirates as well as Christian missionaries from Great Britain).

The language has a written literature going back to the 15th century. Malagasy has a rich tradition of oral and poetic histories and legends. The most famous is the national epic, Ibonia, about a Malagasy folk hero of the same name.

The first book to be printed in Malagasy is the Malagasy Bible which was translated by British Christian missionaries working in the highlands area of Madagascar.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i, y /i/		o /u/
Mid	e /e/		ao, ô /o/
Low		a /a/

Consonants

		Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stop or affricate	Voiceless	p		t	ts	ʈʂ	k
	Voiced	b		d	dz	ɖʐ	ɡ
	Voiceless prenasalized	ᵐp		ⁿt	ⁿts	ɳʈʂ	ŋk
	Voiced prenasalized	ᵐb		ⁿd	ⁿdz	ɳɖʐ	ŋɡ
Fricative	Voiceless		f		s			h
	Voiced		v		z
Nasal		m			n
Lateral					l
Trill					r

The alveolars /s z l/ are slightly palatalized. The velars /k g/ are noticeably palatalized after /i/ (e.g., alika /alikʲa/ "dog").

Words are generally accented on the penultimate syllable, unless the word ends in ka, tra or na, in which case they are accented on the antepenultimate syllable. In many dialects, unstressed vowels (except /e/) are devoiced, and in some cases almost completely elided; thus fanorona is pronounced "fa-NOORN-ah", with the final syllable barely spoken. (Malagasy sounds similar to its French transliteration Malgache.)

Orthography

Malagasy has been written using the Latin alphabet since 1823, before which the Arabic Ajami script, or Sorabe ("large writings") as it is known in Madagascar, was used for astrological and magical texts.

The alphabet consists of 21 letters: a, b, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, v, y, z. The orthography maps rather straightforwardly to phonetics. The letters i and y both represent the /i/ sound (y is used word-finally, and i elsewhere), while o is pronounced /u/. The affricates /ʈʂ/ and /ɖʐ/ are written tr and dr, respectively, while /ts/ and /dz/ are written ts and j. The letter h is often silent. All other letters have essentially their IPA values.

@ is used informally as a short form for amin'ny, which is a preposition followed by the definite form, meaning for instance with the.

Diacritics

Diacritics are not obligatory in standard Malagasy. They may however be used in the following ways:

• ` (grave accent) shows the stressed syllable in a word. It is frequently used for disambiguation. For instance in "tanàna" (town) and "tanana" (hand), where the word that is an exception to the usual pronunciation rules (tanàna) gets an accent. Using accent on the word that follows the pronunciation rules ("tànana") is less common, mainly in dictionaries.
• ´ (acute accent) may be used in
• very old dictionaries, along with grave accent
• dialects such as Bara
• French (Tuléar) and French-spelled (Antsirabé) names. Malagasy versions are Toliara/Toliary and Antsirabe.
• ^ (circumflex) is used as follows:
• ô shows that the letter is pronounced /o/ and not /u/, in malagasified foreign words (hôpitaly) and dialects (Tôlan̈aro). In standard Malagasy, "ao" is used instead.
• sometimes the single-letter words "a" and "e" are written "â" and "ê" but it does not change the pronunciation
• ¨ (diaeresis) is used with n̈ in dialects for a velar nasal /ŋ/. Examples are place names such as Tôlan̈aro, Antsiran̈ana, Iharan̈a, Anantson̈o. This can be seen in maps from FTM, the national institute of geodesy and cartography.
• ~ (tilde) is used in ñ sometimes, perhaps when the writer cannot produce an n̈. In Ellis' Bara dialect dictionary, it is used for velar nasal /ŋ/ as well as palatal nasal /ɲ/.

Grammar

Word Order

Malagasy has a highly unusual Verb Object Subject word order:

Mamaky boky ny mpianatra
(reads book the student)
"The student is reading the book"

Nividy ronono ho an'ny zaza ny vehivavy
(bought milk for the child the woman)
"The woman bought milk for the child"

Within phrases, Malagasy order is typical of head initial languages: Malagasy has prepositions rather than postpositions (ho an'ny zaza "for the child"). Determiners precede the noun, while quantifiers, modifying adjective phrases, and relative clauses follow the noun (ny boky "the book(s)", ny boky mena "the red book(s)", ny boky rehetra "all the books", ny boky novakin'ny mpianatra "the book(s) that the student read").

Somewhat unusually, demonstrative determiners are repeated both before and after the noun ity boky ity "this book" (lit. "this book this").

Verbs

Verbs can be either sejunctive (having a separate object) or adjunctive (taking a joined subject, like a personal pronoun). Sejunctive forms are used for active verbs, while adjunctive forms are used for the passive voice.

Verbs inflect for past, present, and future tense, where tense is marked by prefixes (e.g., mividy "buy", nividy "bought", hividy "will buy").

Nouns, Pronouns, Locative Adverbials

Malagasy has no grammatical gender, and nouns do not inflect for number. However, pronouns and demonstratives have distinct singular and plural forms (cf. io boky io "that book", ireto boky ireto "these books").

There is a complex series of personal and demonstrative pronouns, depending on the speaker's familiarity and closeness to the referent.

Lexicography

The first known Vocabulaire Anglais-Malagasy was published in 1729. An 892 page Malagasy-English dictionary was published by James Richardson of the London Missionary Society in 1885. It is available as a reprint. It seems that a similar English-Malagasy dictionary was never published. Later works have been of lesser size.

• Richardson: A New Malagasy-English Dictionary. Farnborough, England: Gregg Press 1967, 892 p. ISBN 0-576-11607-6
• Diksionera Malagasy-Englisy. Antananarivo: Trano Printy Loterana 1973, 103 p.
• An Elementary English-Malagasy Dictionary. Antananarivo: Trano Printy Loterana 1969, 118 p.
• English-Malagasy Phrase Book. Antananarivo: Editions Madprint 1973, 199 p. (Les Guides de Poche de Madagasikara.)
• Paginton, K: English-Malagasy Vocabulary. Antananarivo: Trano Printy Loterana 1970, 192 p.
• Rakibolana Malagasy. Fianarantsoa: Régis RAJEMISOA - RAOLISON 1995, 1061 p.

References

See also

• Jean Joseph Rabearivelo

External links

• Ethnologue report for "Plateau" Malagasy, a major dialect of Malagasy.
• Malagasy - English Dictionary
• (information for/on localization)