“My intention is to give a minimum of what you need to know about the current Malagasy language for the benefit of the greatest number rather than specialists. It is clear that most speakers of this beautiful language are unaware of its history, that is to say its formation and its evolution.” (Solomon Andria)

The Malagasy term
Initially, the adjective derived from the country name Madagascar was madecasse. This term, used for the first time by the tribes of the South of the Big Island has turned into Malagasy, because in this part of the country, often the sound 'of' turns into 'the' or 'the' . The French who arrived at the end of the 19th century as colonizers francized the word Malagasy, thus becoming Malagasy! Between the adjective madécasse-malagasy and the “Malagasy” francization, the (linguistic) relationship is not obvious. Some believe that “Malagasy” was coined on purpose, perhaps to give the word a pejorative connotation; "malagase" would be more appropriate and would be less suspect.
Language and dialects
There are 18 dialects in Madagascar, a figure corresponding to the number of Malagasy tribes. Of course, I'm making a simplification. There are perhaps more dialects than tribes because in some regions, several clans are part of the same tribe and speak their dialects. And all the tribes form a single ethnic group, in the first sense of the term, the Malagasy ethnic group. These dialects have, by definition, a common substrate but also characteristic features that distinguish them from each other. In simpler terms, Malagasy dialects are variants of the same language. They vary in space and also in time.
The substrate comes from the Pacific, and is part of the Austronesian languages ​​spoken also in Southeast Asia. It was enriched, among other things, with Bantu and Swahili words, but also later with English and French words. Moreover, I am tempted to find Semitic traces in the Malagasy language. Because the structure of the words, for example the substantives by their suffixes which often designate the possessive, makes think of the substantives in the Hebrew language.
The current Malagasy language
There are two popular theses which must be considered with caution. The first develops the idea of ​​the existence of several languages, rather than dialects, in Madagascar. However, we know that a Malagasy from the extreme south of the island who goes to the extreme north, that is to say 1600 km from his home, will speak the northern dialect correctly in a few weeks. The difficulties he will encounter are mainly at the level of vocabulary and pronunciation. An example may support this idea: a text translated by Lazarist missionaries in the 17th century into the Mahafaly dialect, a southern tribe, around present-day Tolagnaro, is intelligible today to other tribes on the island. He had the substance of the common Malagasy language. The second thesis asserts that the Merina dialect, from one of the central tribes, has become the official language of Madagascar. This thesis looks like a simplification of the formation of an official language. Some probably adopt it for lack of information.
The process of forming the Malagasy official language follows the same rules as elsewhere. Two examples suffice to explain it. We know that France has several languages ​​– rather than dialects. Breton is a Celtic language that its speakers share in part with the Welsh and Scots. We can also mention Catalan which has affinities with languages ​​of Latin origin, Occitan and many other languages. It was not until the Renaissance and especially the Reformation of the 16th century that French became the official language, thanks in large part to the translation of the Bible into this language. The translation of the Bible into French is therefore a unifying factor because alongside their mother tongues, the French spoke the official language. We thus consider the 16th century as the century of the flight of French literature with the main actors Rabelais, Du Bellay, Ronsard, Marot (the Protestant), Théodore de Bèze (the assistant of the Reformer Jean Calvin) and many others. others. Germany went through the same process long before France. Thanks to the translation first of the New Testament by the Reformer Martin Luther and later of the whole Bible, this large, heterogeneous country has a common language, German.
The development of the Malagasy language
We therefore start from the idea that there are several dialects in Madagascar. They have the same origins and keep the same substrate. They gradually enriched themselves with foreign words, but often not in the same way, since dialects vary, as we have said, in time and space. When the missionaries of the London Missionary Society arrived on the east coast, in the present city of Toamasina, the largest city in the Betsimisaraka region in August 1818, they decided to go further inland from the Big Island to arriving in Antananarivo, the largest city in the Merina region, certainly for strategic reasons. Antananarivo was indeed the capital of the Kingdom of Madagascar – but some kingdoms were not yet won over to unification by King Radama I. For them, missionary work had to begin there.
These missionaries undertook the translation of the entire Bible into Malagasy. In June 1835, the Malagasy had the Bible in their language. It is obvious that the Malagasy of the Bible is very close to the Merina dialect in terms of vocabulary, phonemes, pronunciation and idioms, the translators dealing daily with the Merina among whom they lived. They were also close to the royal family concerned with the preservation and development of habits and customs, and especially the language. It was also at this time that the State adopted the Latin alphabet to the detriment of Sorbian, the Arabic script! We can well imagine that words (and their spelling) and concepts were invented, as in the time of Luther who translated the New Testament and the French reformers who translated the whole Bible. As in Germany and France in the 16th century, Malagasy literature in its modern form was born thanks in large part to the translation of the Bible. It has developed and been enriched with new concepts and new words borrowed or simply forged. Currently she is able to say the essential.
Another path
We could imagine another scenario for the development of the Malagasy language. The LMS missionaries could have stayed in Toamasina – named after a missionary Thomas Bevan, in the Betsimisaraka region! They would then have translated the Bible into a Malagasy very close to the Betsimisaraka dialect, especially in vocabulary and pronunciation. The other tribes could then understand this Malagasy with a little effort on their part. The official Malagasy would be slightly different from what it is now.
The Malagasy of the future
Like all languages, Malagasy is formed and forged throughout history. Admittedly, it is rich in certain areas such as in human relations, but it must allow itself to be enriched by the contribution of dialects which have precise terms, but also sounds, diphthongs and idioms that official Malagasy does not have. . Speakers of the Malagasy language, currently numbering 19 to 20 million, and educators in particular, must accept the dialectic between official Malagasy and the dialect, between the development of this language which unites all Malagasy, and the safeguarding of dialects that express the diversity in this unit.
Solomon Andria for Tourmalin Madagascar (blog/21/01/16)

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