Cocos Malay

Cocos Malay is a post-creolized variety of Malay, spoken by the Cocos Malays who predominantly inhabit the Cocos Islands and Christmas Island region which is a part/territory of Australia. Apart from Australia, this language is also spoken by the diaspora of Cocos Malay descendants in Sabah, Malaysia.
Linguistically, Cocos Malay derives from the Malay trade languages of the 19th century, specifically the Betawi language, with influences from Javanese and Sundanese. 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.
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. However, this form of language restriction ended by 2011.

History

The first Cocos Malays were slaves brought to the then uninhabited Cocos 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. 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 labourers from Banten, Central Java, and Madura. The Java Islanders labourers were called "Bantamese" to distinguish them from the Malays who had previously inhabited the island. Nowadays, the native language spoken by their ancestors has largely been lost in the Cocos 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 to Christmas Island and Sabah, Malaysia. Emigration continued in the 1970s, when Cocos Islanders began migrating to the Australian mainland, with one-way tickets. Due to ongoing migration, the Cocos Malay speakers reside in cities across Western Australia, including Perth, Katanning, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, and Port Hedland.
In 2009, Cocos Malay was banned from use in the education sector in the Cocos 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. However, the ban on the use of Cocos Malay did not last long and was finally able to be used normally again in 2011.

Characteristics

It has the following characteristics:

Javanese influence: cucut 'shark', kates 'papaya', walikat 'shoulderblade' etc.
Hokkien-derived first-person and second-person singular gua and lu.
Causative marker kasi.
Progressive particle ada.
Possessive marker punya.
The third person indefinite form ong derived from orang 'person'

Cocos Malay exhibits lexical items and Dutch loanwords that are common in Indonesian and Betawi 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.

Vocabulary

Cocos Malay has strong influences from three languages: Malay, Javanese, and Betawi. Some examples of words in Cocos Malay include:

cucut
kates
walikat
ong
lu
kasi
melendot
ledes
pulas
ngaco
sore
kuping
capek
gampang
ada*
punya*
siang*
kamu
saya*
mengapa
malam*
pagi*
di mana*
ke mana*
siapa*
bagaimana
tidak
orang*
hilang*
hendak
mau*

Note: "*" indicates words that exist in both Malay and Betawi.

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Low		a

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Plosive & affricate	p b	t̪	d	tʃ dʒ		k g
Nasal	m		n		ɲ	ŋ
Fricative			s				ʁ	²
Approximant	w				j
Lateral approximant			l

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

The uvular which always occurs intervocalically is present in Coco Malay but not in Standard Malay or Indonesian.
Certain consonants, , which occur in Standard Malay are not present in Cocos Malay.
With regard to the amongst the three languages, the in Cocos Malay is often dropped, especially in word-initial position. Examples include:
Sample text

Cocos Malay:
Spoken Suburban Betawi :
English: