Malay or Bahasa Melayu has around 77 million native speakers and around 173 speakers speak it as a second language. Basically it has about 250 million of total speakers in the region encompassing three countries in Southeast Asia such as Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Indonesia.
People outside of Southeast Asia may not be familiar with Malay but if we include speakers of all varieties of Malay, it is one of the top 10 most widely spoken languages in the world just after Portuguese.
Standard Malay is very user friendly language for learners, especially if we are used to study more complex languages. The biggest challenge that we likely face is the difference between the formal language and the casual language and the dialectal variation that we will encounter especially when it deals with different pronunciation. However, by learning the standard polite form of Malay, we form a good basis for communication and we can learn the more colloquial style of communication as we go. Read further here.
