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Victor A. Friedman: FROM THE BALKANS TO BAHASA: COMPARATIVE ...
that does not usually spring to mind, but that is well worthy of future research,
namely some of the language situations in Southeast Asia – especially the Malayo-Indonesian
region, which I term the Bahasa region (see below) – that can
fruitfully be compared to Southeast Europe.
In a sense Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia represent the two tips of an
Islamic crescent: the Balkans at the northwest and Malaysia and Indonesia at the
southeast, and this fact helps bring out linguistic comparisons not usually made. 1
An anecdote that relates to Macedonia and Malaysia, or, more exactly, to Macedonian
and Malay, can serve as an introduction. I was in Skopje in 2009, corresponding
by e-mail with James Collins, director of Northern Illinois University’s
Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and at the time I was counseling patience. I
used the old-fashioned Macedonian expression sabar. It is no coincidence that
this is exactly the same word in Malay. The word is from the Arabic root ṣabr, it
was brought to both Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia via Islam (via Arabic
and Turkish, respectively), and it denotes an Islamic cultural value – ultimately,
the qualities of endurance and acceptance – that finds resonance in the day-to-day
lives of many peoples of many religions and becomes adopted as local or perhaps
is even laminated onto that which is already local.
Beg’s (1979) comparative study of Arabic loanwords in Malay and other
languages highlights the need for more comparison of Southeast Europe and
Southeast Asia by his very lack of such material. Beg gives an interesting compilation
of Arabic loanwords that occur in Malay, on the one hand, and a comparison
with a variety of African, Asian, and European languages, on the other. For
Africa he has Hausa, Berber, Somali, Swahili, and seven languages of Ethiopia 2 ,
for Asia he has five Indic languages 3 plus Tibetan, 4 and for Europe English, Latin,
and Spanish with passing mention of three other Romance languages 5 as well as
Turkish (p. xvi). Beg’s (1979: xvi) sample of ten words of Arabic origin shared by
Turkish, Swahili, and Malay, is illustrative of the impact of Arabic on the Balkans
via Turkish: every single one of these words also occurs in Bulgarian, Macedo-
1
To be sure, North Africa (and formerly Spain) extend further west, Western Europe is now grappling
with a new set of contacts with Islam, and in the east China and the Philippines both have significant
populations. Still, in terms of the combination of historical spread and large-scale national
Islamization, the Balkans are the northwesternmost and Malaysia-Indonesia the southeasternmost
tips, and the area from Anatolia to Arabia to Central Asia (sensu largo, including the relevant Indo-
Iranian cultural area) forms a larger historical and geographic center.
2
Geez, Harari, Amharic, Argobba, Gurage, Tigre, Tigrinya.
3
Hindi, Gujarati, Pahari, Bengali, Oriya.
4
Note especially bag-šiš ‘tip’, bi-ṣli-mli ‘great demon’, hu-ka ‘water pipe’, ’a-rág ‘barley-based
alcoholic beverage’
5
French, Italian, and Portuguese.
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