Malaysia is a multicultural, multilingual, multi-ethnic society. The country is composed of three major ethnic groups. Indigenous Malaysians, or Bumiputera, which literally translates as “princes of the soil,” are numerically dominant—their largest single group, Malays, makes up slightly more than half of the country’s population. Bumiputera coexist with two large minority communities: Chinese and Indian Malaysians. These communities make up around 23 percent and 7 percent of the country’s population, respectively.