Sri Lankan Malay People - "Ja Minissu"( Sri Lanka's Malays are largely descended from political exiles including chiefs and nobles, soldiers, convicts and freed slaves from the Indonesian archipelago and the Malayan peninsula who were brought over to the island by the Dutch during the 17th and 18th centuries. ) Malays in Sri Lanka: came with their women-folk( In 1813 more than 400 Madurese men and women and children embarked from Surabaya to join the Ceylon Malay Regiment, followed in 1818 by a shipment of about 228 Javanese Soldiers and their families, mostly recruited from North-Coast cities of Semarang and Gresik in Java-SLMA 7/118- Brownrigg to John Kendall, 8th August, 1818.) Sri Lankan Malay ( Malayu Bahasa, the Malay language traditionally spoken by the country's 60,000 - strong Malay community is under threat. It is today only in areas such as Kandy, Badulla, Gampaha, Kirinda, Hambantota and Slave Island where sizeable concentrations of Malays are found, that the younger generations speak Malay. In the other areas, it is largely restricted to the older folk who freely converse with one another in Malay.) Sri Lanka Malays in focus ( Malayu Bahasa, the Malay language traditionally spoken by the country's 60,000. Names of places such as Jawatte, Kartel (Slave Island) in Colombo, Jaela in the suburbs, Jayakachcheri (Chavakachcheri) in the North and names of streets such as Malay Street, Java Lane, Jalan Padang point to the fact that Malays have been living in the various parts of the country. ) Malay community in Kurunegala (At present there are about 60,000 Malays in Sri Lanka. )