| Cocos Islands Malay | |
|---|---|
| Basa Pulu Kokos | |
.jpg) A welcome sign onHome Island featuring Cocos Malay. Note the use of the Betawi standard form "di" instead of the common Malay "ke" to indicate location. | |
| Native to | Australia,Malaysia |
| Region | Cocos (Keeling) Islands,Sabah |
| Ethnicity | 4,000 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-creolizedvariety ofMalay, spoken by theCocos Malays who predominantly inhabit theCocos (Keeling) Islands andChristmas Island region which is a part/territory of Australia. Apart from Australia, this language is also spoken by the diaspora of Cocos Malay descendants inSabah, Malaysia.[1]
Linguistically, Cocos Malay derives from theMalay trade languages of the 19th century, specifically theBetawi language, with influences fromJavanese andSundanese.[2][3]Malay is offered as a second language in schools, andMalaysian has prestige status; both are influencing the language, bringing it more in line with standard Malay.[4]
There is also a growing influence ofEnglish, considering the Islands having been anAustralian territory andglobalization 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.[5] However, this form of language restriction ended by 2011.[2]
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 inMalacca and inBanjarmasin, 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 fromBanten,Central Java, andMadura. The Java Islanders laborers were called "Bantamese" to distinguish them from the Malays who had previously inhabited the island. Nowadays, thenative language spoken by their ancestors has largely been lost in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, although some words have entered the Cocos Malay.
Over time, Cocos Malay appears to be very vulnerable considering that the number of Cocos Malay speakers is only around 500 people. In the 1950s, due to economic difficulties, many Cocos Malay-speaking people emigrated toChristmas Island andSabah, Malaysia. Emigration continued in the 1970s, when Cocos Islanders began migrating to the Australian mainland, with one-way tickets (in accordance with Clunies-Ross's policy at the time that they were free to go but not free to return). Due to ongoing migration, the Cocos Malay speakers reside in cities acrossWestern Australia, includingPerth,Katanning,Geraldton,Kalgoorlie, andPort Hedland.[2]
In 2009, Cocos Malay was banned from use in the education sector in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands because it was considered not in accordance with the rules of language politeness, and instead used Indonesian as the language of instruction which is considered by the Malays as a standard variant of Malay.[7] However, the ban on the use of Cocos Malay did not last long and was finally able to be used normally again in 2011.[2]
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]
Cocos Malay has strong influences from three languages:Malay,Javanese, andBetawi. Some examples of words in Cocos Malay include:[citation needed]
Note: "*" indicates words that exist in both Malay and Betawi.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Low | a |
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive & affricate | p b | t̪ | d | tʃ dʒ | k 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 fromStandard Malay andIndonesian:[9]
| Standard Malay | Cocos Malay | English Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| [ˈhisap˺] | [ˈisap˺] | 'suck' |
| [ˈhuta̪ n] | [ˈuta̪ n] | 'forest' |
| [ˈhiduŋ] | [ˈiduŋ] | 'nose' |
| [ˈhaus] | [ˈaus] | 'thirsty' |
Cocos Malay:
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.
SpokenSuburban Betawi (Ora Batavian):
Saban minggu tuh orang gawéannya meréksain ntu, ngider-ngiderin ntu. Kalo aér asat, bisa nyebrang; kalo aér naék, bisa naék perahu ntu. Ama kali baé ada hiu ngasup, ngerécokin nyang di dalem situ, dibunuh baé. Ntu ikan macem-macem juga ada di situ. Pantonya ada dua, perahu gé bisa ngasup.
English:
"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."
