| South Barisan Malay | |
|---|---|
| Central Malay | |
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Bengkulu South Sumatra Lampung |
Native speakers | (1.6 million cited 2000)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
| Dialects | Benakat Bengkulu Besemah Enim Lematang Ulu Lintang Ogan Rambang Semende Serawai |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | pse |
| Glottolog | high1292 (partial) |
 The distribution of Barisan lects across southern Sumatra. | |
South Barisan Malay, also calledCentral Malay orMiddle Malay, is a collection of closely related Malayic isolects spoken in the southwestern part of Sumatra. None of them has more than one million speakers.
Traditionally, Malayic lects in southern Sumatra are divided based on river shed and microethnic boundaries, regardless of actual similarities and differences between them. Linguists originally used the termMiddle Malay (a calque of DutchMidden-Maleisch) when referring to the closely related lects in the Pasemah-Serawai cultural region. Later, to avoid misidentification with a temporal stage ofMalay language (i.e. the transition between Old Malay and Modern Malay), the termCentral Malay began to be used.[2] McDonnell (2016) uses the geographic termSouth Barisan Malay instead, referring to the southern region of theBarisan Mountains where these lects are spoken.[3] Meanwhile,Glottolog uses the termCentral Malay instead to refer Malayic varieties around thestrait of Malacca andSouth China Sea (e.g. Deli Malay,Riau Malay, orSarawak Malay), grouped underGreater Riau–Johoric branch.[4]
McDowell & Anderbeck (2020) classified South Barisan lects into 2 major dialect clusters, namely 1) Oganic and 2) Highland.[5]
This classification was partially adopted (with the exception of Pekal) byGlottolog in its latest version (4.8).[6] All ISO 639-3 language codes for South Barisan Malay varieties were merged into [pse] in 2007 by theSummer Institute of Linguistics, with the exceptions of [vkk] for Kaur and [pel] for Pekal.[5] The old codes ([bke], [eni], [lnt], [ogn], [sdd], [srj]) are no longer in active use, but still have the meaning assigned to them when they were established in the Standard.
