Not to be confused with the Malayalam language (spoken in India), the Malay language, also known locally as Bahasa Melayu, is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people who reside in the Malay peninsula, southern Thailand, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau islands, and parts of the coast of Borneo. It is the official language of Malaysia and Brunei. It is also used as a working language in East Timor.

It is practically the same as or mutually intelligible with Bahasa Indonesia, the official language of Indonesia, but differentiated in name for political reasons. The official standard for Malay, as agreed upon by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, is Bahasa Riau, the language of the Riau Archipelago, long considered the birthplace of the Malay language.

In Malaysia, it is known as Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia, which means the Malay, or Malaysian, language. The latter term, which was introduced by the National Language Act 1967, was predominant until the 1990s, when most academics and government officials reverted to the older term, which is used in the Malay version of the Federal Constitution.

However, many Malay dialects are not so mutually intelligible: e.g. Kelantanese pronunciation is difficult even for some Malaysians to understand, while Javanese Malay tends to have a lot of words unique to it which will be unfamiliar to other speakers of Behasa Malayu. The language spoken by the Peranakan (Straits Chinese, a hybrid of Chinese settlers from the Ming Dynasty and local Malays) is a unique patois of Malay and the Chinese dialect of Hokkien, which is mostly spoken in the former Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca. The use of this interesting language is dying out, however, with the Peranakan now choosing to speak either Hokkien or English.

Malay is normally written using the Roman alphabet, although a modified Arabic script called Jawi also exists. It is an agglutinative language, meaning that the meaning of the word can be changed by adding the necessary prefixes or suffixes. Root words are either nouns or verbs, e.g. masak (to cook) yields memasak (cooks, is cooking, etc.), memasakkan (cooks, is cooking, etc. [something]), dimasak (cooked - passive) as well as pemasak (cook - person), masakan (cooking, cookery). Many initial consonants undergo mutation when prefixes are added: e.g. sapu (sweep) becomes penyapu (broom); panggil (to call) becomes memanggil (calls, is calling, etc.), tapis (sieve) becomes menapis (sieves, is sieving, etc.)

Another distinguishing feature of Malay is its use of measure words (penjodoh bilangan).

English is also widely used in Malaysia, especially by the second largest and third largest ethnic groups in Malaysia (Chinese and Indian), and because of its importance as the language of international business. In Malaysia, the status of Bahasa Melayu as the national language is guaranteed by the Constitution (Perlembagaan Malaysia, Pekara 152).

Most residents of the five southernmost provinces of Thailand — a region that, for the most part, used to be part of an ancient Malay kingdom called Pattani — speak a dialect of Malay called Yawi (not to be confused with Jawi), which is similar to Kelantanese Malay, but the language has no official status or recognition.