| Serui Malay | |
| Region: | Yapen Islands Regency, Waropen Regency |
| Coordinates: | -2°N 136°W |
| Pushpin Map: | Southeast Asia |
| Familycolor: | Creole |
| Fam1: | Malay Creole |
| Fam2: | East Indonesian Malay |
| Fam3: | Papuan Malay |
| Isoexception: | dialect |
Serui Malay is a variety of the Papuan Malay language native to parts of the Indonesian province of Papua. It is spoken in the city of Serui and other places on the Yapen Islands, as well as in nearby coastal areas of the New Guinea mainland.
Though it is likely that Malay was used to an extent in previous centuries, its widespread use and its current form date to the 20th century. Serui Malay is generally referred to as Bahasa Indonesia by its speakers, but it diverges from Standard Indonesian in a number of ways. It has similarities to Ambon Malay, but Van Velzen considers it to be more closely related to Ternate Malay.
A large number of local languages are spoken in the area, and the need for a common lingua franca has been underlined by the centuries-old traditions of inter-group interaction in the form of slave-hunting, adoption, and intermarriage.It is likely that Malay was first introduced by the, who had contacts with the Sultanate of Tidore, and later, in the 19th century, by traders from China and South Sulawesi. However, Malay was probably not widespread until the adoption of the language by the Dutch missionaries who arrived in the early 20th century and were then followed in this practice by the Dutch administrators. The spread of Malay into the more distant areas was further facilitated by the Dutch; Flemish: Opleiding tot Dorpsonderwijzer ('Education for village teacher') programme; it tended to attract a lot of Waropen men, which has led to the influence of the Waropen language on the local Malay varieties.
People from West Yapen (Woi, Ansus, Pom) neutralise word-final nasals to [{{IPA-link|ŋ}}]. Those from other ethnic groups do not have pronounced as /[ŋ]/ because the phoneme is absent from their native languages. The distinction between /r/ and /l/ is clearer in the speech of educated people. The palatal stops of Indonesian are not often distinguished by uneducated speakers, who substitute pronounced as //d͡ʒ// with pronounced as //di//, and pronounced as //t͡ʃ// with pronounced as //ti//, pronounced as //si// or pronounced as //t// (Indonesian pronounced as //ɡəred͡ʒa// -> pronounced as //geredia//; pronounced as /t͡ʃəŋkeh/ -> pronounced as //sieŋge// or pronounced as //sieŋke//). Word-finally, voiceless stops and pronounced as //h// are dropped: pronounced as //sudah// -> pronounced as //suda//, pronounced as //takut// -> pronounced as //tako//; pronounced as //k// may or may not be dropped: pronounced as //balik// -> pronounced as //bale//, pronounced as //sibuk// -> pronounced as //sibuk//. pronounced as //f// is consistently distinguished, unlike in many other varieties of Papuan Malay.
Indonesian schwa /pronounced as /ə// has various realisations, sometimes accompanied by a change in the position of stress: as pronounced as //i// (pronounced as //pərˈɡi// -> pronounced as //ˈpiɡi//), as pronounced as //a// (pronounced as //səˈnaŋ// -> pronounced as //saˈnaŋ//), as pronounced as //o// (pronounced as //pəlˈuk// -> pronounced as //ˈpolo//), as pronounced as //e// (pronounced as //t͡ʃəˈpat// -> pronounced as //t͡ʃeˈpat//), or dropped altogether (pronounced as //təˈrus// -> pronounced as //ˈtrus//). Indonesian pronounced as //ai// and pronounced as //au// correspond to pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //o// respectively: pronounced as //pakai// -> pronounced as //pake//, pronounced as //pulau// -> pronounced as //pulo//.
The morphology is more limited than in standard Indonesian. For example, passive voice or object focus are not marked on the verb, and verb bases are generally used without affixes. A smaller number of derivational affixes are used than in Indonesian. The productive verbal prefixes are the following:
Reduplication is also used, with several meanings, both with nouns and with verbs: tatawa 'laugh' -> tatawa-tatawa 'laugh repeatedly', ronda 'stroll' -> ronda-ronda 'stroll around', ana 'child' -> ana-ana 'children', lap 'swab' -> lap-lap 'cleaning rag'.
Most speakers do not distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first person (Indonesian: kami and Indonesian: kita in Standard Indonesian), even though this distinction is present in most regional languages of the area.
Possession is expressed using punya (or its shortened form pu):
Serui Malay diverges in a number of ways from Indonesian in its vocabulary. There are words that have extended or otherwise changed their meaning in comparison with Indonesian:
There are many words in Serui Malay not found in Standard Indonesian:
Serui Malay has borrowed vocabulary from Dutch, Portuguese, other Malay varieties and regional languages: