- published: 12 Jul 2015
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Malays (Malay: Melayu Jawi: ملايو) are an ethnic group of Austronesian people predominantly inhabiting the Malay Peninsula including the southernmost parts of Thailand, south coast Myanmar and island of Singapore, coastal Indonesian including east of Sumatra, coastal Borneo, including Brunei, coastal Sarawak and Sabah, and the smaller islands which lie between these locations. These locations today is part of the modern nations of Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Southern Myanmar, Southern Thailand and Western Indonesia.
Today, the common identity that binds Malay people together is their language (with variant of dialects exist among them), Islam and their culture; although in the past Malay people were largely animist and Hindu-Buddhist before conversion to Islam took place in the 15th century. Malay culture has a number of similarities with cultures of neighboring ethnic groups, such as those of Minang culture, Aceh, and to some degree Javanese culture; however it differs by being more overtly Islamic than the Javanese culture which is more multi-religious.
The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 94 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines.
There are around 180 languages spoken in the Philippines, most of them belonging to the Austronesian language family, with Tagalog and Cebuano having the greatest number of native speakers. The official languages of the Philippines are Filipino and English and most Filipinos are bilingual or trilingual.
Most Filipinos refer to themselves colloquially as "Pinoy" (feminine: "Pinay"), which is a slang word formed by taking the last four letters of "Pilipino" and adding the diminutive suffix "-y". The lack of the letter "F" in the pre-1987 Philippine alphabet, Abakada, had caused the letter "F" to be substituted with "P". This is why, when the 28-letter modern Filipino alphabet was made official in 1987, the name Filipino was preferred over Pilipino. The name Filipino was chosen by the Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos, who named the islands "las Islas Filipinas" ("the Philippine Islands") after Philip II of Spain.
Bangladesh is largely ethnically homogeneous. Indeed, its name derives from the Bengali ethno-linguistic group, which comprises 98% of the population. Bengalis, who also predominate in the Indian state of West Bengal, are one of the most populous ethnic groups in the world. Variations in Bengali culture and language do exist of course. There are many dialects of Bengali spoken throughout the region. The dialect spoken by those in Chittagong and Sylhet are particularly distinctive. In 2009 the population was estimated at 156 million. About 90% of Bangladeshis are Muslims and the remainder are mostly Hindus.
Bangladesh has the highest population density in the world, excluding a handful of city-states and small countries with populations under 10m, such as Malta and Hong Kong.
Most of the demographic statistics below are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.
The mid-2009 estimate for total population was 156,050,883 which ranks Bangladesh 7th in the world (CIA).
Naturally there is some uncertainty about the population, especially in a developing country such as Bangladesh with high illiteracy and a large rural population. For instance, in 2005 there was not a consensus whether Bangladesh or Russia had a larger population. The UN's ESA ranked Russia 7th in the world and Bangladesh 8th. However, the CIA World Factbook ranked Bangladesh 7th and Russia 8th in the same year. The point is now moot as the population of Russia is in decline while that of Bangladesh is growing.