Anyone interested in conlangs would do well to study Malay. It is not a constructed language per se, but modern standard Malay (Bahasa baku) underwent a massively interesting standardization phase in the 60s which resulted in a fairly consistent language today.
By contrast the standardization of Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia baku) looks comical. The rules of Indonesian are all over the place.
Unfortunately in Malaysia, modern spoken and indeed modern written Malay has gone the same way Indonesian has gone - textspeak and internet lingo made all the standardization efforts in vain. But from an intellectual point of view, standardized Malay has very nice consistent properties to it - it's a lot harder on rules than English.
For example in English there are no rules on nounification of verbs. In Malay, you simply wrap the lemma of the verb between "per...an" - so speak "kata"(meaning speak) becomes "perkataan" (meaning words). There are clearly also rules regarding spelling - "cegah" (deter) becomes "pencegahan" (deterrence) instead of "percegahan", but by and large the standards are sane and doesn't have very many exceptions, or have exceptions that can actually be encoded by rules (unlike English where it's I before E except before C, except that's not true at all).
And the best part about the standardization is that it doesn't shun the heritage of the language. There are a lot of Australasian aboriginal linguistic features that made the cut and got improved in my opinion.
Take for example, the linguistic feature that is repeated across many Australasian aboriginal languages: repeating a word to indicate a higher count.
"Laki" as a root word means "man". "Laki laki" means... "men". The standardization process that happened in the 50s formalized a rule that had been in the language earlier - "Lelaki" means "men". Interestingly here's a Indonesian grammar blog that discusses this: https://www.katabaku.com/2016/05/laki-laki-atau-lelaki-yang-... (TL;DR - "lelaki" is "true" while "laki-laki" is canonical form)
In Malaysia, the word "laki-laki" is no longer being used. Instead the language and community converged upon using the word "lelaki", which is a more succint and elegant way of using it.
TL;DR - Malay went through a very nice standardization process while Indonesian went through in my opinion, a not-as-well-thought-of standardization process.
"laki" actually an example of a word that changes its meaning when reduplicated instead of creating a plural. "laki" means husband and "laki-laki" means man or male. So you have to be careful about using for producing plurals. Generally Indonesians prefer to denote number contextually e.g. by saying "one apple" or "many apple".
"laki" means man in Malay, but is a synonym for "suami" (husband) in Indon. I assume "lelaki" slipped into Indon lingo after a while (if you read old Malay books, before the 1960s, the word "laki-laki" is used a lot more than "lelaki") - I have no experience with written Indonesian stuff
As somebody learning Bahasa Malaysia (or Bahasa Melayu, or whatever it is now), do you have any references on this, particularly the standardisation part of Bahasa Baku? For example, I'd always assumed "lelaki" just meant "male", which probably means saying "dia lelaki" is a little bit off ;) (and is probably why I shouldn't pick up BM from street signs...)
Dewan Bahasa Dan Pustaka. They have an awesome library in KL. I once spent a day in there when I was far younger than I am today. Ask for their reference section for the language.
Do note that modern BM doesn't have very many markers for plurality.
"Dia lelaki" is off mainly because it translates to "he male". "Seorang lelaki telah ..." translates to "one men already..." which is semantically equivalent to "one man already".
By contrast the standardization of Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia baku) looks comical. The rules of Indonesian are all over the place.
Unfortunately in Malaysia, modern spoken and indeed modern written Malay has gone the same way Indonesian has gone - textspeak and internet lingo made all the standardization efforts in vain. But from an intellectual point of view, standardized Malay has very nice consistent properties to it - it's a lot harder on rules than English.
For example in English there are no rules on nounification of verbs. In Malay, you simply wrap the lemma of the verb between "per...an" - so speak "kata"(meaning speak) becomes "perkataan" (meaning words). There are clearly also rules regarding spelling - "cegah" (deter) becomes "pencegahan" (deterrence) instead of "percegahan", but by and large the standards are sane and doesn't have very many exceptions, or have exceptions that can actually be encoded by rules (unlike English where it's I before E except before C, except that's not true at all).
And the best part about the standardization is that it doesn't shun the heritage of the language. There are a lot of Australasian aboriginal linguistic features that made the cut and got improved in my opinion.
Take for example, the linguistic feature that is repeated across many Australasian aboriginal languages: repeating a word to indicate a higher count.
"Laki" as a root word means "man". "Laki laki" means... "men". The standardization process that happened in the 50s formalized a rule that had been in the language earlier - "Lelaki" means "men". Interestingly here's a Indonesian grammar blog that discusses this: https://www.katabaku.com/2016/05/laki-laki-atau-lelaki-yang-... (TL;DR - "lelaki" is "true" while "laki-laki" is canonical form)
In Malaysia, the word "laki-laki" is no longer being used. Instead the language and community converged upon using the word "lelaki", which is a more succint and elegant way of using it.
TL;DR - Malay went through a very nice standardization process while Indonesian went through in my opinion, a not-as-well-thought-of standardization process.