According to 2007 data, this language is spoken by 20,000 speakers, mainly the people of East Flores.

[4] Apart from the Larantuka, speakers also live in Konga which are also on Flores and Wure (Wureh) on Adonara, where the two dialects are different.

[8] In terms of grammatical typology, Larantuka Malay can be considered as an isolating language, "with little productive morphology of any kind, apart of reduplication.

[2] However, when compared with other varieties of Easteen Indonesia Malay, this language has its own lexical and phonological characteristics.

[13] Structural and phonological characteristics indicate that Larantuka Malay formed independently from the geographically closest Malay variety,[14] although in its development it takes over some of its properties (including a certain order of possessive structures — possessor-possessum with the connector 'puN').

[15] This language is thought to have migrated directly from the Malay Peninsula together with its speakers.

[22] H. Steinhauer (1991) discusses the phonology and development of Larantuka Malay.1991 This language is written in Latin script, although on a minimal scale.