Philippine Malay language

Malay is spoken by a minority of Filipinos, particularly in the Sulu Archipelago and parts of Mindanao, mostly in the form of trade and creole languages. Historically, Malay was spoken as a lingua franca prior to the Spanish colonization of the Philippines and Malay was the language spoken by the aristocracy. Ferdinand Magellan used a Malay servant Enrique of Malacca to converse with the Visayans. This variant is known as Old Malay.

Even in non-Malay speaking communities, mostly in the Muslim communities, titles of nobility such as datu or rajah (which themselves originate from Sanskrit) are retained.

The other predominant, and the proper dialect of Malay spoken in the Philippines is Indonesian, which is spoken by Indonesians who have either settled or do business in the Philippines. It is also learned as a foreign language, by students and members of the armed forces.

The use of Malay was a result of extensive interactions between the native kingdoms in the Philippines and the various ancient Malay civilizations that existed in modern-day Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia as it was the trade language of the entire Maritime Southeast Asian region. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription, the earliest-known document found in the Philippines was written in a mix of Old Malay, Classical Tagalog and Old Javanese and in the Kawi alphabet which recorded interactions between the classical civilizations in Luzon with the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit and the Malay Srivijaya Empire.

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