Variation of Riau Malay Language in Rokan Hilir Regency

Language variation is the study of those features of language that differ systematically as compare different groups of speaker or the same speaker in different situation. As a multicultural country, Indonesia has so much variety of language. In addition to the official language, Indonesian people also have regional languages in each region. Rokan Hilir is one of them. Rokan Hilir, where the majority of the population is Malay, has a special regional language, namely the Malay language. This descriptive qualitative study identifies the variation of Riau Malay language in Rokan Hilir Regency review by analyze kinds of variation, the realization and cause of language variation are there in the Malay language spoken in Rokan Hilir. To understand the variation of Riau Malay language in Rokan Hilir observation and interview were used in this study. The result indicate that kinds of language variation were found there, the regional dialect that is found as the most kinds of language variation for about 3 times appearing or (50 %). Phonology (53.8%) was the most dominant realization used. Furthermore, not all the reasons of variation found, they were geographical (42.8%) and chronological (28.5%) and two new finding they were mixed marriage 14.2% and technological development 14.2%.