Jawi is the orthography in which Malay has been written since the Middle Ages, when it was adapted from the Arabic script. Introduced by Muslim traders, it was adapted to Malay phonology using diacritics that modified six letters. It was used until the Roman script (Rumi) brought in by European traders and colonisers began to supplant it in the…

This article looks at the presence of Italian in the linguistic landscape (LL) of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Rather surprisingly, Italian is quite visible, and it might even be the most used European language after English. After a general introduction on the Italian language and Malaysia, including the latter's LL, the article goes on to outline the…