There's definitely a lot more than three native words left in the language, though it's also true that Malay/Indonesian has borrowed a lot more than many of the other Austronesian languages. But, from what I remember from the Austronesian languages seminar I took a few years ago, there's still lots of basic vocabulary in Malay, like names for body parts (such as mata `eye', which has cognates in just about every Austronesian language), some of the pronouns, and numbers (but only from 1-6; 7 is derived from a root meaning `to point', but I forget where 8 and 9 come from) which can be traced back to Proto-Austronesian.

How can you stop the adoption of words in a society that is made up of so many different cultures and people who participate in a global economy?

Well, exactly -- you can't. But some people get very bent out of shape about it.

Interesting. The "official Malay" term for 'budget' (I'm assuming that 'belanja' is the basic noun and 'anggaran' an adjective) looks like French 'bilan' or English 'balance,' spelled sideways. The French, meanwhile, have abandoned formal use of 'bilan' for the more colloquial borrowing 'budget,' too, haven't they?

As I understand, Icelanders and Finns have succeeded in excluding most foreign words from their vocabulary. On the other hand, almost all Icelanders and Finns are multilingual.

Scandinavia is an interesting case in language policy. Theoretically the Icelanders have saddled themselves with a tiny, useless language, but no harm seems to come of it. Theoretically the Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians have stupidly ended up with four very similiar standard languages (including Norwegian bokmal and nynorsk) for ~20 million people, but no real harm comes of that either. Probably it's really good for the employmenty chances of prescriptive grammarians and multilingual copy editors.

(please add norse character set here)

Forgive my ignorance, but I would be curious to know if Malay is especially amenable to the introduction of loanwords because of its phonological range. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that the reason English has been able to absorb such a vast number of loanwords, aside from world domination by the British Empire, was that it contains far more sounds than most other languages, making the pronounciation of most foreign words relatively easy.

jteoh:

I strongly doubt that the phonemic diverstiy of a language has anything to do with it. Japanese has a very limited system that allows for only about 96 different syllables yet is currently in the midst of a borrowing bonanza primarily from English but also to a lesser extent from French. The biggest two sources supporting this massive borrowing are advertising and comics. The trend appears to be strongly age-linked the younger the speaker (down to about 14) the more borrowed words used. Foreign words are considered both fashionable, associated with the elite, and associated with a high level of education --a powerful combination socio-linguistically.

Ziska wrote:

As I understand, Icelanders and Finns have succeeded in excluding most foreign words from their vocabulary.

That's mostly a myth. Finnish has lots of foreign words (German, Russian, Swedish, English...). Icelandic has perhaps not so many, but it does have foreign words, e.g. "bill" (car), "banani" (banana), "kaffi" (coffe) and "tóbak" (tobacco).

Like Joe said, the Malay use of English pronouns usually indicate education, and has air of fashion around it(at least it does in Malaysian television.)
I'm a Singaporean Malay and here in Singapore there's also the use of pronouns but not as excessive in Malaysia(I would think because we incoporate more English in our sentences). I myself cringe at the use(*) and find it extremely awkward.

* Mainly by the younger generation.(note that I'm 20.) I somehow find it comfortable when my parents use it though.

Interesting forum! While we are discussing Iceland borrowing terms from english, I would like point out that German, English, all the Scandinavian languages have roots from the old Germanic. So, whichever language you see, you will see similar words. So, you would ask, "What about the new words?" My answer is that words are derived from older words. If they had similar words to begin with, the newly derived words cannot be too subtly different.

Before anyone can say Icelandic is being globalized (demoralized, as I would say), I will say that it has a council that regularly (and routinely) creates words to keep up with the ever so fast developing terminologies.

-Nemore