Pencak Silat to Minangkabau word "silek". Due to Sumatran origin of the language, the Sumatran origin of the term is likely. Although the word "silat" is widely known throughout much of Southeast Asia, the term "pencak silat" is used mainly in Indonesia. Pencak silat was chosen in 1948 as a unifying term for the Indonesian fighting styles. It was a compound of the two most commonly used words for martial arts in Indonesia. "Pencak" was the term used in central and east Java, while "silat" was used in Sumatra, Malay Peninsula and Borneo. In Minang usage, pencak and silat are seen as
Silat Melayu Silat Melayu Silat Melayu (Jawi: ), literally meaning "Malay silat", is a blanket term for silat styles of the Malay people. The term was originally used in reference to the native silat of Riau in Indonesia, but today it is more commonly used for the systems created in the Indochinese peninsula, particularly Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei and Vietnam. In modern usage, the term is most often used to differentiate the Malaysian styles from Indonesian pencak silat. English-language writings sometimes mistakenly refer to silat Melayu as "bersilat" but this is actually a verb form of the noun silat, literally meaning "to