Locale En My

Reference data for the English (Malaysia) locale — endonym English (Malaysia), written in the Latin script, left-to-right (LTR).

Identifiers

• BCP 47 tag: en-MY
• ISO 639-1: en
• ISO 639-3: eng
• Script: Latn (Latin)
• Region: MY (Malaysia)
• Text direction: ltr — left-to-right (LTR)

Speakers (approximate)

• L1 (native): 380,000
• L2 (additional): 9,000,000
• L1+L2 (total): 9,380,000

Base locale

This is a regional variant of Locale En 001 (English), the base/macro locale for this language.

Pluralization

CLDR plural categories for this locale: one, other (2 forms).

• one — i = 1 and v = 0 (e.g. 1)
• other — everything else (e.g. 0, 2~16, 100, 1000, …)

See Unicode Messageformat for writing plural messages using these categories.

Translating into this locale

Apply Locale En 001 and use these Malaysian conventions. Malaysian English follows British spelling; the colloquial mixed form is for informal speech and chat only.

• Spelling: British forms (-ise, -our, -re).
• Dates and numbers: day/month/year, decimal point and comma thousands separator, RM before the amount for the ringgit.
• Context: Bahasa Malaysia is the national language; official names (ministries, programs) are often kept in Malay with an English gloss.
• Tone: polite and respectful; titles such as "Dato'", "Datuk", "Tan Sri", and "Encik" appear in business writing and should be used correctly.

Common pitfalls

• Dropping honorifics and titles when addressing officials.
• Writing colloquial "lah" particles in formal text.
• The general pitfalls in Locale En 001 also apply.

Learn more

• Locale for BCP 47 identifiers, locale-sensitive formatting, pluralization, and text-direction concepts that apply across all locales.
• Unicode Messageformat for writing plural/selection messages correctly for this locale's grammar.
• Microsoft Writing Style Guide (https://learn.microsoft.com/style-guide/welcome/)
• Unicode CLDR locale data for date, number, and currency formats (https://cldr.unicode.org)