Palembang language

Palembang
Palembang Malay
باسو ڤليمباڠ
Baso Pelémbang
Native toIndonesia
RegionSouth Sumatra
EthnicityPalembang Malay
Native speakers
(1.6 million cited 2000 census)
Austronesian
DialectsPalembang Lama
Palembang Pasar
Pesisir
Language codes
ISO 639-3plm (deprecated for mui in 2008)
mui-plm
Glottologpale1264
Linguasphere33-AFA-dh
The distribution of Musi lects across southern Sumatra

Palembang, also known as Palembang Malay (Baso Pelémbang), is a Malayic variety of the Musi dialect chain primarily spoken in the city of Palembang and nearby lowlands, and also as a lingua franca throughout South Sumatra. Since parts of the region used to be under direct Javanese rule for quite a long time, Palembang is significantly influenced by Javanese, down to its core vocabularies.

While the name Palembang in the broad sense can also refer to the Musi dialect group as a whole, it is most commonly used as an endonym for the speech used in the city and its immediate rural vicinity.

In 2008, all the ISO 639-3 codes for Musi dialects, including [plm] for Palembang, were retired and merged into [mui] Musi. The old codes ([plm], [lmt], [pen], [rws]) are no longer in active use, but still have the meaning assigned to them when they were established in the Standard.