Talk:Đông Yên Châu inscription

Please check one the main references being used here, i.e. reference [4] LOST KINGDOMS: Hindu-Buddhist sculpture of early SouthEast Asia. Apparently the paper does not mention or describe Dong Yen Chau anywhere in the paper. Probably better to remove this reference because it is misleading and find a valid reference as a replacement. Similarly any sole statement that is particularly using this reference should be deleted as well because it is not substantiated by any valid reference.

I sense subtle barely concealed POV-pushing on the part of User:Orhanghazi here, an avowed Malay supremacist. The inscription was found in Vietnam, not Malaysia, FFS! I have changed the WikiProject from Malaysia to Vietnam with this edit.

Regarding

It is entirely unremarkable that the Cham language in the 4th century (when the language should actually be classified as Proto-Chamic or Pre-Proto-Chamic) resembled Malay. Modern Cham still resembles Malay to an extent, as it is relatively closely related, and a 1600 years older ancestor of Cham obviously resembled Malay even more. That's a no-brainer and no reason to cast doubt on the identification of the inscription as being written in Cham, and trying to claim it for Malay. Note that the only scholars (?) trying to do that write in Malay themselves, which is highly suspicious. It's like (Soviet?) Russian "scholars" trying to claim Old Church Slavonic inscriptions from Bulgaria for Russian, (Nazi?) German "scholars" trying to claim Early Proto-Norse inscriptions from Sweden for German, or (Wahhabite/Salafite?) Arabic "scholars" trying to claim Ge'ez inscriptions from Aksum for Arabic. That's just plain frivolous and a classic case of jingoism/ultranationalism/supremacism. Because, why sure, we Malays are the biggest and best Austronesians, so our language must be attested first. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:00, 5 November 2014 (UTC)


 * 1) Nobody is denying that the inscription is in Cham. It is perfectly mentioned in the first sentence.
 * 2) The existence of Malay vocabulary in the text is neither POV nor theory, but a plain fact (even an ordinary joe with basic literacy in Malay may instantly recognise it). Although the entire structure of the text cannot be considered as purely Malay, the appearance of some Malay words is explicitly noted by Thurgood and even Coedes. This was the basis of assertions by several Malay linguists, including the highest Malay language authority of Malaysia, the DBP, in discussing about the history of Malay language. The question of why the inscription is completely ignored and did not even exist in ‘mainstream' discussion about Malay language in Indonesia, i left to your friend, Humboldt to answer. Perhaps ‘over nationalistic falsification’?? ooops
 * 3) To claim that the inscription is the oldest inscription of any Austronesian language, is vague and overgeneralisation. The Cham language is indeed closely related to Acehnese and Malay in terms of morphology, syntactic and affixes, but not to the entire Austronesian group of languages.
 * 4) Like i said before, if you find any scholarly writing that explicitly denies the existence of Malay words in there, feel free to add it.Ø:G (talk) 12:38, 6 November 2014 (UTC)


 * p/s - I never say that Malays are the best Austronesian, but thanks for the compliment.


 * Ahem.., it was not a compliment, it was an irony. The question is, was this inscription written in Old Malay or Old Cham? Orhanghazi already brought the Old Malay claim, although unfortunately only provided Malaysian-based journals/writings that suspected to be biased, and might contain somewhat their government-sponsored effort to assert the wider "influence" of Malay. Maybe we should try to find references that states it was Old Cham instead of Old Malay. Again even modern Cham and Malay have similar vocabularies. It is unremarkable since most of the vocabs are Austronesian in origin, (next to common Sanskrit loanwords, which is common practice in Indianized civilization from Champa to Java). I like to point out that the term "labuh" which means "to fall" is more related to Sundanese vocabulary (since I speak the language) "labuh" which also means "to fall", than Malay "jatuh". Which just plainly pointed their common Austronesian ancestry. Oh btw, this inscription did not caught the attention in mainstream Indonesian linguist on their study of Old Malay language, probably because they tends to think of it as Old Cham instead of Old Malay. Who knows? maybe Indonesian linguist and scientist already satisfied with established notions that the oldest Old Malay inscriptions was Kedukan Bukit inscription.  Gunkarta  talk 22:25, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Done, just add a reference from Academia that stated it was an oldest form of written Cham language. Rewrite the phrase to be more neutral, contains both arguments, pro and cons of Old Malay vs Old Cham claims. Have a nice day.  Gunkarta  talk 17:00, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Gunkarta. The article is much better now. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:09, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The Academia paper added by Gunkarta does not mention Dong Yen Chau inside it. I have requested it to be removed in the latest comment inside this talk section. 119.40.118.196 (talk) 11:01, 8 May 2023 (UTC)