Cocos Malay

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Cocos Islands Malay
Basa Pulu Cocos/Basa Pulu Keling
Native to Australia, Malaysia
Region Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Sabah
Ethnicity4,000 in Malaysia (2000) [1]
Native speakers
(1,100 in Australia cited 1987–2012) [1]
Creole
Latin (Malay alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3 coa
Glottolog coco1260
ELP Cocos Islands Malay

Cocos Malay is a post-creolized variety of Malay, spoken by the Cocos Malays of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island, and those originally from the Cocos Islands currently living in Sabah. [1]

Contents

Cocos Malay derives from the Malay trade languages of the 19th century, specifically the Betawi language. [2] Malay is offered as a second language in schools, and Malaysian has prestige status; both are influencing the language, bringing it more in line with standard Malay. [3] There is also a growing influence of English, considering the Islands having been an Australian territory and globalization drifting modern terms into the daily parlance. In 2009, Cocos Malay students were prohibited from using their own language and failure to comply resulted in punishment in the form of "speaking tickets" which meant that they were required to carry out cleaning duties in school. [4] However, this form of language restriction ended by 2011. [5]

History

The first Cocos Malays were slaves brought to the then uninhabited Cocos (Keeling) Islands in 1826 by Alexander Hare and John Clunies-Ross. Most Malay slaves were mainly obtained in Malacca and in Banjarmasin, but they originally came from all over Indonesia, and the language that they spoke among each other was a form of Malay. [6] Given that Malay was the lingua franca or trade language throughout Maritime Southeast Asia at the time, it is likely that the slaves spoke some form of pidgin Malay. Between 1857 and 1910 the Clunies-Ross family also brought in a large number of Javanese laborers from Banten, Central Java and Madura. The Javanese laborers were called "Bantamese" to distinguish them from the Malays who had previously inhabited the island. Nowadays, the Javanese language spoken by their ancestors has largely been lost in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, although some words have entered the Cocos Malay.

Characteristics

It has the following characteristics:

Cocos Malay exhibits lexical items and Dutch loanwords that are common in Indonesian and Betawi(Jakartan Malay) but rarely used in Malay. Therefore, Cocos Malay is considered to be a Malay-derived creole derived from Betawi, although Cocos Malay does not have strucutual features in common with Betawi as -a change to -è and transitive suffix -in. [6]

Phonology

Vowels

Vowels Table [7]
Front Central Back
High iu
Mid eəo
Low a

Consonants

Consonants Table [7]
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Post-
alveolar 		Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Plosive &
affricate 		p     bt̪         dtʃ    dʒk     g    (ʔ)
Nasal      m     n    ɲ     ŋ
Fricative s         ʁ    (h)2
Approximant      w    j
Lateral
approximant 		    l

There are three ways in which Cocos Malay differs from Standard Malay and Indonesian: [7]

  1. The uvular [ʁ] which always occurs intervocalically is present in Coco Malay but not in Standard Malay or Indonesian.
  2. Certain consonants, [f v ʃ z], which occur in Standard Malay are not present in Cocos Malay.
  3. With regard to the [h] amongst the three languages, the [h] in Cocos Malay is often dropped, especially in word-initial position. Examples include:
Standard MalayCocos MalayEnglish Gloss
[ˈhisap˺][ˈisap˺]'suck'
[ˈhuta̪ n][ˈuta̪ n]'forest'
[ˈhiduŋ][ˈiduŋ]'nose'
[ˈhaus][ˈaus]'thirsty'

Sample text

Saban minggu orang tu kərja'an presa tu, raun tu. Kalo' aer kring bole mənyəbərang, aer bəsar bole bawa' jukung tu, ame' məngkali ada yu masu', ganggu nang di dalam situ tu, bunu tu. Itu macam-macam ikan ada situ tu. Emang dia punya pintu dua, jukung bole masu' emangnya.

"Every week people would go and check them, they would go on a round. At low tide one could walk over, at high tide one could take a boat, in order to take out or to kill, say, a shark, who had come into the pond and was disturbing the turtles and fish inside. Because there used to be all sorts of fishes in there. There were in fact two gates: boats could come in."

Further reading

References

  1. 1 2 3 Cocos Islands Malay at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  2. ↑ Wurm, Mühlhäusler, & Tryon, Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia and the Americas, 1996:686
  3. ↑ Ansaldo, 2006. "Cocos (Keeling) Islands: Language Situation". In Keith Brown, ed. (2005). Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2 ed.). Elsevier. ISBN   0-08-044299-4.
  4. ↑ Bunce, Pauline (2012). Out of Sight, Out of Mind… and Out of Line: Language Education in the Australian Indian Ocean Territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Multilingual Matters. pp. 37–59. ISBN   978-1-84769-749-3.
  5. ↑ Welsh, Alistair (2015). "Cocos Malay language since integration with Australia". Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures. 9 (1). Archived from the original on 2020-10-26. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
  6. 1 2 3 Alexander, Adelaar. (1996). Malay in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
  7. 1 2 3 Soderberg, Craig D. (2014). "Cocos Malay". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 44 (1): 103–107. doi: 10.1017/S0025100313000364 .


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