Lesson 10 (The 12 Months)

Click to listen  

As can be seen above the 12 months of the year are all borrowed from English with adaptations to their spelling. Thus "March" is spelt Mac because "ch" in all Malay words is replaced with just the letter "c" though the pronunciation remains that of "ch" (as in "chair").
Just as we normally precede the days of the week with the word hari (eg. hari Isnin, hari Selasa, etc.) so the months of the year usually start with the word bulan eg. bulan Januari, bulan Februari, etc. when you want to say January or February.
And how do you say "in the month of March"? In Malay we say pada bulan Mac.
There is another meaning for bulan, apart from "month". It also means the moon.
The Malay word for "date" with respect to the calendar is tarikh or tanggal (this word is more used in Indonesia).
Example: Poskad yang baru saja diterima ini bertarikh 30 Mac 2014. (The postcard which has just been received was dated 30 March 2014.) I know this is quite a difficult sentence to read. There is a little pause after Poskad yang baru saja diterima ini before you finish the sentence as baru saja means "just now" or "at this moment" while ini actually refers to the postcard (Poskad ini being "This postcard").