Malagasy language

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Malagasy is the westernmost member of the Austronesian language family, spoken on Madagascar, where it is an official language. The name Malagasy is also used to refer to the indigenous people of Madagascar, who make up some 36 tribes and are of mixed Indonesian and African descent.

Malagasy shares 90% of its basic vocabulary with Maanyan, a language from the region of the Barito River in southern Borneo. This is a result of the fact that the island was first settled from about 1,500 to 2,000 years ago by Indonesians, probably mostly from Borneo. Later, the original Indonesian settlers mixed with East Africans and Arabs, amongst others.

The Malagasy language also includes borrowings from Bantu languages and Arabic. It has a highly unusual Verb Object Subject word order. Words are accented on the penultimate syllable, unless the word ends in ka, tra or na, in which case they are accented on the antepenultimate syllable. Unstressed vowels are often elided; thus fanorona is pronounced /fa'nurn/ ("fa-NOORN") and Malagasy sounds like its French transliteration Malgache.

Malagasy orthography maps rather straightforwardly into phonetics, with a few exceptions. The letter i is replaced by y at the end of words, and o is pronounced /u/.

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 letters Ô (o-circumflex) and n̈ (n-diaeresis) are occasionally used, for instance in place names such as Tôlan̈aro, Antsiran̈ana, Iharan̈a, Anantson̈o. This can be seen in in maps from FTM, the national institute of geodesy and cartography. Alternative spellings and pronunciations such as "Taolagnaro" exist.

Dictionaries

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 0576116076
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.

References

Matthew E. Hules, et al (2005). The Dual Origin of the Malagasy in Island Southeast Asia and East Africa: Evidence from Maternal and Paternal Lineages. American Journal of Human Genetics, 76:894-901, 2005.