Cocos Islands Malay | |
Nativename: | Basa Pulu Cocos/Basa Pulu Keling |
States: | Australia, Malaysia |
Region: | Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Sabah |
Ethnicity: | 4,000 in Malaysia (2000) |
Speakers: | in Australia |
Date: | 1987–2012 |
Ref: | e25 |
Script: | Latin (Malay alphabet) |
Familycolor: | creole |
Fam2: | Malay-based creole |
Fam3: | Betawic |
Iso3: | coa |
Glotto: | coco1260 |
Glottorefname: | Cocos Islands Malay |
Cocos Malay is a post-creolized variety of Malay, spoken by the Cocos Malays of Home Island, Christmas Island, and those originally from the Cocos Islands currently living in Sabah.
Cocos Malay derives from the Malay trade languages of the 19th century, specifically the Betawi language.[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] However, this form of language restriction ended by 2011.[4]
It has the following characteristics:
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
High | i | u | |
Mid | e | ə | o |
Low | a | ||
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 from Standard Malay and Indonesian:
Standard Malay | Cocos Malay | English Gloss | |
---|---|---|---|
[ˈhisap˺] | [ˈisap˺] | 'suck' | |
[ˈhuta̪ n] | [ˈuta̪ n] | 'forest' | |
[ˈhiduŋ] | [ˈiduŋ] | 'nose' | |
[ˈhaus] | [ˈaus] | 'thirsty' |