Empowerment and Configuration Malay Language Identity: Infiltration of Foreign Vocabularies Issue

This paper analyses some implications from the absorption of foreign words in empowerment process of Malay language identity. Sources of analysis consisting some of established dictionaries and daily concordance statements. It is argued that the absorption of foreign words has not only brought in new lexical but has come together with a baggage of alien grammatical system which creates confl iction between the source and the target language systems. This paper will expound that the process has disseminated dichotomy in linguistic aspects, either (i) foreign words undergo changes and adjustments in order to comply with the target linguistic system, or (ii) the foreign words resist to maintain their original form and consequently infringing the target linguistic system. This paper focuses retrospectively on how this dichotomy occurs in Malay phonological aspect. It will also touches some of its morphemically and syntactically aspects.