Talk:Gayo language

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


kune keber

Could someone specify whether it belongs to the Inner or the Outer West MP languages? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.77.16.153 (talk) 18:21, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gayo is old malay?[edit]

refer to this publication -> Gayo Language is Old Malay (A Dialectology Study: The Language Change)
any thought? Ckfasdf (talk) 01:53, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ckfasdf: I strongly recommend not to include this piece in the article. It makes an unfounded equation of Gayo with "Old Malay" and ends with a quantitive analysis which only includes Gayo and "New Malay" (= Standard Malay = Indonesian). Little can be learned from it, unless more lects were included. The conclusion that "it is very possible that Gayo’s ancestors are also the ancestors for Achinese, Batak, Minangkabau, New Malay ad other tribes among Sumatra island" is trivial, since all are Austronesian-speaking peoples. The statement could be permutated ad lib (e.g. "Achinese’s ancestors are also the ancestors for ..."). I think Masjawad99 will agree. –Austronesier (talk) 17:21, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is r/badlinguistics stuff LOL. The authors might have misunderstood the term "Old Malay"; I guess they think of it as a synonym for "a pre-Malay non-Malay language of Sumatra which ancestor probably had been spoken there before Malay" (?). Eades' Gayo grammar cited in "Further reading" is open access and good enough if you want to use it to develop the article. Masjawad99💬 22:19, 14 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

LOL... noted Ckfasdf (talk) 04:36, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Writing system?[edit]

The image on the language's infobox shows the language's native script (?) I'm struggling to find any information about it, and everything I have been able to find only shows the language being written in latin, like this this one from omniglot Can anybody find information about it? Svenard (talk) 18:05, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Svenard: As a first measure, I will remove the image, since it is unsourced and not exactly a gem. As for the script, you won't find anything about it before 2017. In 2017, a Gayo "researcher" came forward claiming to have discovered a manuscript in a hitherto unknown script that – according to him – has been in his family's possession for generations and which contains text written in a native script he calls rasi Gayo. You can search for "aksara Gayo" in Google and will find a few sources about it (mostly press reports). While it is not entirely impossible that a hidden literary tradition might have escaped the attention of Indonesian and foreign researchers in the past, I consider it highly implausible. Also, the sources (reporting about local seminars and press conferences) make some outlandish claims like rasi Gayo being the oldest script in Sumatra and possibly being related to ancient Greek stenography. Time will tell whether it is a hoax or really reflects an obscure but genuine literary tradition. For the time being, especially since peer-reviewed academic sources are entirely lacking, any mention of it in this article is totally undue. –Austronesier (talk) 18:53, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]