Petjo language

Last updated
Petjo
Peco' Creole
Native to Indonesia, Netherlands
Native speakers
"some" (2007) [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 pey
Glottolog petj1238 [2]

Petjo, also known as Petjoh, Petjok, Pecok, Petjoek is a Dutch-based creole language that originated among the Indos, people of mixed Dutch and Indonesian ancestry in the former Dutch East Indies. The language has influences from Dutch, Javanese and Betawi. Its speakers presently live mostly in Indonesia and the Netherlands. The language is expected to become gradually extinct by the end of the 21st century, due to Indos' shift toward Indonesian in Indonesia and Dutch in the Netherlands.

Dutch-based creole languages Creole language family with Dutch as lexifier

A Dutch creole is a creole language that has been substantially influenced by the Dutch language.

The Indo people or Indos are Eurasian people living in or connected with Indonesia. In its narrowest sense, the term refers to people in the former Dutch East Indies who held European legal status but who were of mixed descent, that are descendants of various indigenous peoples of Indonesia and Dutch settlers. In the broadest sense, an Indo is anyone of mixed European and Indonesian descent. Indos are associated with colonial culture of the former Dutch East Indies, a Dutch colony in Southeast Asia and a predecessor to modern Indonesia after its proclamation of independence shortly after World War II. The term was used to describe people acknowledged to be of mixed Dutch and Indonesian descent, or it was a term used in the Dutch East Indies to apply to Europeans who had partial Asian ancestry. The European ancestry of these people was predominantly Dutch, but also included Portuguese, British, French, Belgian, German, and others.

Indonesia Republic in Southeast Asia

Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia, between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It is the world's largest island country, with more than seventeen thousand islands, and at 1,904,569 square kilometres, the 14th largest by land area and the 7th largest in combined sea and land area. With over 261 million people, it is the world's 4th most populous country as well as the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the world's most populous island, is home to more than half of the country's population.

Contents

The language

As opposed to a mere pidgin, Petjok is an actual language owned by a social category, "with standardized word order and grammatical markers in pidgin missing". [3]

A pidgin, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside. Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is constructed impromptu, or by convention, between individuals or groups of people. A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language.

Just as the Indo (Eurasian) community historically originated from relationships between European males and Indonesian females, its language reflects this same origin. Typified as a mixed-marriage language, the grammar of Petjok is based on the maternal Malay language and the lexicon on the paternal Dutch language.

The main contact mechanisms responsible for the creation of Petjok are lexical re-orientation; selective replication and convergence. The original speakers of the language do not necessarily want to maintain their first language, but rather create a second one. These creative speakers of the language were probably bilingual, but more fluent in the dominant lingua franca i.e., native Malay language, than Dutch language.

A lexicon, word-hoard, wordbook, or word-stock is the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge. In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word "lexicon" derives from the Greek λεξικόν (lexicon), neuter of λεξικός (lexikos) meaning "of or for words."

Language convergence is a type of linguistic change in which languages come to structurally resemble one another as a result of prolonged language contact and mutual interference. In contrast to other contact-induced language changes like creolization or the formation of mixed languages, convergence refers to a mutual process that results in changes in all the languages involved. Linguists use the term to describe changes in the linguistic patterns of the languages in contact rather than alterations of isolated lexical items.

Malay language Austronesian language

Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family spoken in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. A language of the Malays, it is spoken by 290 million people across the Strait of Malacca, including the coasts of the Malay Peninsula of Malaysia and the eastern coast of Sumatra in Indonesia and has been established as a native language of part of western coastal Sarawak and West Kalimantan in Borneo. It is also used as a trading language in the southern Philippines, including the southern parts of the Zamboanga Peninsula, the Sulu Archipelago and the southern predominantly Muslim-inhabited municipalities of Bataraza and Balabac in Palawan.

In its overall split between grammar and lexicon, the structure of Petjok is very similar to the Media Lengua spoken in Ecuador by the Quechua Indians, with the critical difference that the much older language, Pecok, has undergone late system morphemes and syntactic blends.

Media Lengua language spoken in Ecuador

Media Lengua, also known as Chaupi-shimi, Chaupi-lengua, Chaupi-Quichua, Quichuañol, Chapu-shimi or llanga-shimi, is a mixed language with Spanish vocabulary and Kichwa grammar, most conspicuously in its morphology. In terms of vocabulary, almost all lexemes (89%), including core vocabulary, are of Spanish origin and appear to conform to Kichwa phonotactics. Media Lengua is one of the few widely acknowledged examples of a "bilingual mixed language" in both the conventional and narrow linguistic sense because of its split between roots and suffixes. Such extreme and systematic borrowing is only rarely attested, and Media Lengua is not typically described as a variety of either Kichwa or Spanish. Arends et al., list two languages subsumed under the name Media Lengua: Salcedo Media Lengua and Media Lengua of Saraguro. The northern variety of Media Lengua, found in the province of Imbabura, is commonly referred to as Imbabura Media Lengua and more specifically, the dialect varieties within the province are known as Pijal Media Lengua and Angla Media Lengua.

The most important author that published literary work in this language is the Indo (Eurasian) writer Tjalie Robinson. [4]

Tjalie Robinson is the main alias of the Indo (Eurasian) intellectual and writer Jan Boon also known as Vincent Mahieu. His father Cornelis Boon, a Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) sergeant, was Dutch and his Indo-European mother Fela Robinson was part Scottish and Javanese.

Each urban area with a large Indo community had their own variation of Petjok. For example: the Petjok of Batavia was influenced by a form of Malay which contained many Chinese words, in Bandung, many Sundanese words were used, while in Semarang and Surabaya many Javanese words were in use.

Petjo should not be confused with Javindo, a different creole language spoken by Indos in the Dutch East Indies.

Grammar

This language has a spelling grammar which is not yet perfect or also called old spelling (Ejaan Tempo Dulu) before there is an Enhanced Spelling (Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan). This language was used in parts of Jakarta which was formerly known as Batavia, this language was applied in the days of Dutch East Indies colonization of Indonesia until the Suharto era or the called New Order, but this language is not by now used in Indonesian society and almost extinct.

Grammatical speeling, example:

Related Research Articles

Creole language stable natural languages that have developed from a pidgin

A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages at a fairly sudden point in time: often, a pidgin transitioned into a full-fledged language. While the concept is similar to that of a mixed or hybrid language, a creole is often additionally defined as being highly simplified when compared to its parent languages. However, a creole is still complex enough that it has a consistent system of grammar, possesses a large stable vocabulary, and is acquired by children as their native language, all of which distinguishes a creole language from a pidgin.

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In addition to its classical and literary form, Malay had various regional dialects established before the rise of the Malaccan Sultanate. Also, Malay spread through interethnic contact and trade across the Malay archipelago as far as the Philippines. That contact resulted in a lingua franca that was called Bazaar Malay or low Malay and in Malay Melayu Pasar. It is generally believed that Bazaar Malay was a pidgin, influenced by contact among Malay, Chinese, Portuguese, and Dutch traders.

A mixed language is a language that arises among a bilingual group, typically very abruptly, combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgins arise from populations trying to imitate a language where they have no fluency, a mixed language arises in a population that is fluent in both of the source languages.

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Mardijker people ethnic group in Indonesia

The Mardijker were a community in amongst others Batavia, made up of descendants of freed slaves. They could be found at all major trading posts in the East Indies. They were mostly Christian, of various natives from conquered Portuguese territories, and some Portuguese ancestry. They spoke a Portuguese patois, which has influenced the modern Indonesian language. The Dutch also referred to them as inlandse Christenen.

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Sri Lankan Malay is an Austronesian language formed through a mixture of Sinhala and Shonam, with Malay being the major lexifier. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch who had occupied Batavia of Java exiled native rebels and royalty to Sri Lanka, and they made their first settlements in Hambantota and Kirinde. Later on, the Dutch also garrisoned their military, composed of Malays, in other parts of Sri Lanka. As a result, some scholars even believe that SLM is closely associated with the Batavian dialect of Malay. Sri Lankan Malay (SLM), is found in the Central (Kandy), Southern, and Western provinces of the country. The Malay population living in Kinniya and Mutur no longer speak Malay and have resorted to either Sri Lankan Tamil or Sri Lankan Moor Tamil (SLMT). [4]The majority of the speakers today reside in Northern Colombo. Sri Lankan Malays now constitute 0.3% of the Sri Lankan population, which is approximately 46,000 people.The exact number of speakers is unknown and there are no linguistic statistics available on the number of speakers living in or outside Sri Lanka. Based on the ethnic statistics of Sri Lankan Malays, the estimation of the number of Sri Lankan Malay speakers is between 30,000 to 40,000.

According to the theory of monogenesis in its most radical form, all pidgins and creole languages of the world can be ultimately traced back to one linguistic variety. This idea was first formulated by Hugo Schuchardt in the late 19th century and popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Taylor (1961) and Thompson (1961). It assumes that some type of pidgin language, dubbed West African Pidgin Portuguese, based on Portuguese was spoken from the 15th to 18th centuries in the forts established by the Portuguese on the West African coast. This variety was the starting point of all the pidgin and creole languages. This would explain to some extent why Portuguese lexical items can be found in many creoles, but more importantly, it would account for the numerous grammatical similarities shared by such languages.

Indo people are a Eurasian people of mixed Indonesian and European descent. Through the 16th and 18th century known by the name Mestiço. To this day they form one of the largest Eurasian communities in the world. The early beginning of this community started with the arrival of Portuguese traders in South East Asia in the 16th century. The second large wave started with the arrival of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) employees in the 17th century and throughout the 18th century. Even though the VOC is often considered a state within a state, formal colonisation by the Dutch only commenced in the 19th century.

Rob Nieuwenhuys Dutch writer

Robert Nieuwenhuys was a Dutch writer of Indo descent. The son of a 'Totok' Dutchman and an Indo-European mother, he and his younger brother Roelof, grew up in Batavia, where his father was the managing director of the renowned Hotel des Indes.

Indos in colonial history

Indos are a Eurasian people of mixed Indonesian and European descent. The earliest evidence of Eurasian communities in the East Indies coincides with the arrival of Portuguese traders in the 16th century. Eurasian communities, often with distinct, specific names, also appeared following the arrival of Dutch (VOC) traders in the 17th and 18th century.

<i>Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad</i>

The Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad was one of the leading and largest daily newspapers in the Dutch East Indies. It was based in Batavia on Java, but read throughout the archipelago. It was founded by the famous Dutch newspaperman and author P. A. Daum in 1885 and existed to 1957.

Victor Ido is the main alias of the Indo (Eurasian) Dutch language writer and journalist Hans van de Wall. Born in Surabaya, Dutch East Indies from a Dutch father and Indo (Eurasian) mother. Ido was the Art Editor of P.A.Daum's Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad and later the Chief Editor of newspaper Batavia's Handelsblad as well as an accomplished musician (organist).

Dutch Indies literature

Dutch Indies literature or Dutch East Indies literature is a section of Dutch literature encompassing Dutch language literature inspired by colonial and post-colonial Insulinde from the Dutch Golden Age to the present day. It includes Dutch, Indo-European and Indonesian authors. Its subject matter thematically revolves around the VOC and Dutch East Indies era, but also includes the postcolonial discourse.

References

Bibliography

Notes

  1. ↑ Petjo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Petjo". Glottolog 3.0 . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (New York, 1994), Page 35.
  4. ↑ Website of Tjalie Robinsons Dutch biographer
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