Malay was once the lingua franca for the Malay Archipelago region, i.e. the Nusantara sphere and beyond. The Malay had been used widely by traders and seamen as the language of trade and commerce. It illustrates the richness of Malay in its nautical and maritime words throughout the pre-modern era, which indirectly led to the positioning of Malaysia as a maritime nation at that point in time. This paper explores Malay words through investigative evidence of words used in the Malay world's seas, where historically, the peninsula was the focus of trade and commerce for the Nusantara region. An investigation to seek evidence of nautical words was conducted on the Malay glossaries in two historical writings. The primary source of analysis was the Shellabear English Malay Dictionary (1916), with the Malacca Maritime Code of the Malays (Stamford Raffles, 1879) as another source of analysis to supplement the findings on Malay as the maritime language. The dictionary is composed of 614 pages with 7000 Malay words and phrases that had equivalence to English nautical words and an appendix of household, nautical and medical terms, among others. A manual calculation shows that Shellabear had 109 'nautical terms' entries in this English–Malay translated dictionary. The maritime nature of the Malay world in both texts reflects many terms related to seafaring, fishing, trade, and navigation, with a prevalence of different types of boats, fishing equipment, and navigation techniques.

Keywords: Dictionary; Lingua Franca; Malay; Maritime words; Malay seas

Ahmad, I. (2002). Perkamusan Melayu suatu pengenalan. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.

Andaya, L. Y. (2012). "The 'Sea of Malayu': An Ocean Perspective of Malay History." WordPress.com. https://icssis.files.wordpress.com › 2012/05. pp 47–58.

Andaya, L. Y. (2014). "The 'Sea of Malayu': An Ocean Perspective of Malay History." In Discovery and Praxis: Essays in Asian Studies, ed. David Jones and Michele Marian (pp. 207-20). Albany: SUNY Press.

Andaya, B. W. (2017). Seas, Oceans and Cosmologies in Southeast Asia. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 48(3), 349–371. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26859406

Alamsyah, Mualimin & Supriyono A. (2021). E3S Web of Conferences 317, 04003 (2021) ICENIS 2021. https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf /202131704003

Ansaldo U. (2009). The Linguistic Ecology of South East Asia. Contact Languages: Ecology and Evolution in Asia. Cambridge University Press.

Asha Doshi. (1994). Bonifacio Sibayan & Leonard E Newell, eds Papers from the First Asia International Lexicography Conference Manila Philipines (1992). LSP Special Monograph Issue, 35, 69-87. Manila Linguistic Society of the Philipines.

Benjamin, G. (2013). Indigenous migrations, Southeast Asia. The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration. Wiley Online Library.

Collins J. (2005). Bahasa Melayu Bahasa Dunia: Sejarah Singkat. Yayasan Obor Indonesia Embong, Rahman; Hans-Dieter Evers and Rashila Ramli. 2017. One Belt One Road (OBOR) and Malaysia: A Long-Term Geopolitical Perspective. IKMAS Working Paper No. 5.

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Chan K. L. (2016). Power of Language Index. http://www.kailchan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Kai-Chan_Power-Language-Index-full-report_2016_v2.pdf

Dewan Bahasa. http://prpmv1.dbp.gov.my/Search.aspx?k=jumlah&d=1

Evers, H. D. (2016). Nusantara: History of a Concept. JMBRAS, 89(310), 3- 14.

Evers, H. D., & Mhd Darit Sezali. (2012). "Malaysian Maritime Potential and the Straits of Malaca". Annuals of Maritime Sociology, 20(1), 40-45.

Evers H. D. (2017). “Connecting oceans: Malaysia as a maritime nation”. The 12th Pok Rafeah Public Lecture. Institute of Malaysia and International Studies. IKMAS UKM.

Hajar A. Rahim. (2015). Bahasa Tanjong: The Heritage Language of the Jawi Peranakans of Penang. Kajian Malaysia, 33(2), 91–111.

Hunt, R. (1996). William Shellabear: A Biography. Kuala Lumpur: University of Malay Press.

Julian, G. (2020). What are the most spoken languages in the world? Retrieved May 31, 2020.

Kanumoyoso, B. (2018). Malay Maritime World in Southeast Asia. Journal of Maritime Studies and National Integration, 2(1), 16-22. https://doi.org/10.14710/jmsni.v2i1.2861

Macatangay, J. C. (2022). An Analysis of Archetypes in Batangas Religious Legends. 3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature®️ The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 28(4). http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2022-2804-11

Madagascar and the Nusantara World (http://www.lemurdolls.com/manusa.htm) contains a map of Nusantara languages.

Manguin P. Y. (2022). A Real Seafaring People: Evocations of Sailing in Malay Literature. https://doi.org/10.4000/archipel.2905

Meng V. (2019). Southeast Asia: Linguistic Perspectives. DOI:10.47298/cala2019.10-2

Mohamad, N., Harun, K., & Ismail, N. H. (2015). Perubahan makna dan sosiobudaya: Tinjauan terhadap kamus Marsden 1812. SALPBM IX, November, 194-200.

Nazilah M. & Nor Hasimah. (2017). Malay Science: A Study on the 17th Century Dictionary. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 7(6).

Nautical Language http://www.see-the-sea.org/nautical/naut-body.htm

Noraini Md. Yusoff. (2018). Laut Darat Dunia Satu: Cultural Tropes of Sea-inspired Oral Pantun. In Hans-Dieter Evers, Abdul Rahman Embong, Rashila Ramli (Eds.), Connecting Ocean: Malaysia as a Nusantara Civilisation.

Raffles T. (1879). The Maritime Code of the Malays. JSBRAS 3.

Randriamasimanana, Ch. (2000). Word order typology and Malayo-Polynesian languages. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference of the New Zealand Asian Studies Society, ed. by Ch. Randriamasimanana and R. Haddon, 266–288. Palmerston North:

Massey University.

Samad Ahmad. (1979). (Ed.). Sulalatus Salatin (Sejarah Melayu). Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.

Sears A. The Sea Road. http://sbs.mnsu.edu/socialstudies/studentportfolios/alex_sears_knowledge_3.pdf

Shellabear, W. G. (1916) An English Malay Dictionary. https://archive.org/details/englishmalaydict00shelrich

Zakaria M. Yatim. (1992). The Development of the Law of the Sea in relation to Malaysia. Malaysian Management Journal, 1(1), 87-98.