Language Similarities

I recently bought an English-Malay Malay- English dictionary. I was also looking for the English-Tamil, Tamil-English but I wasn't able to find one. My colleagues in the organization said I have to look for it in bigger bookstores 

During the nights and free time at the office, I would browse through the dictionary to learn basic words like greetings and common things. I already know that there are words that are similar (if not the same) in the Bahasa Melayu and Tagalog (my language). I've came to know about this when i went to Indonesia for vacation. You see Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu are very similar except for certain words and the pronunciation especially of the 'e'. the Malaysian would read it like the u in under and umbrella and the Indonesians would read it as the word is spelled. example berapa (how much) is read as spelled by the Indonesians and the Maysians would read it as burapa (like the u in under). 

So going back to the similarities in Tagalog and Malay. Here are some of the words that are similar:

And here are some more:

(erratum: rich person should be orang kaya not irang kaya)

Not only are some words similar, the loan words (borrowed words from other language) are spelled almost similar as well:

I think that these similarities are due to the fact that geographically, Malaysia and Philippines share a border. There were even theories that the first Philippine people were descendants of the Malay and Indones races. During the barter trade era, Philippines has also been actively trading with Malaysia and Indonesia being neighboring countries.

As for me this fact is very interesting. Having studied Language in college, finding these similarities brings a clue/ key into their culture as language, as they argue, represents the culture of a country in a dialectical manner.

Not only is it interesting, it is also very helpful. I get to have a clue of what the signages on the streets or document titles say because of the similar words. Meanwhile, I'll go check my Malay dictionary for more.:)