Malay Trade and Creole Languages

Malay Trade And Creole Languages

In addition to its classical and literary form, Malay has various regional dialects established before the rise of the Malaccan Sultanate. But beyond these, Malay spread through interethnic contact and trade across the Malay archipelago as far as the Philippines. This contact resulted in a lingua franca that was called Bazaar Malay or low Malay. It is generally believed that Bazaar Malay was a pidgin, perhaps influenced by contact between Malay and Chinese traders.

Besides the general simplification that occurs with pidgins, the Malay lingua franca had several distinctive characteristics. One that possessives were formed with punya 'its owner'; another that plural pronouns were formed with orang 'person'. The only Malayic affixes that remained productive were tər- and bər-.

Other features:

• Ada became a progressive particle.
• Reduced forms of ini 'this' and itu 'that' before a noun became determiners.
• The verb pərgi 'go' was reduced, and became a preposition 'towards'.
• Causative constructions were formed with kasi or bəri 'to give' or bikin or buat 'to make'.
• A single preposition, often sama, was used for multiple functions, including direct and indirect object.

For example,

• Rumah-ku 'my house' becomes Saya punya rumah
• Saya pukul dia 'I hit him' becomes Saya kasi pukul dia
• Megat dipukul Robert 'Megat is hit by Robert' becomes Megat dipukul dek Robert

Bazaar Malay is still used to a limited extent in Singapore and Malaysia. The most important consequence, however, has been that pidgin Malay creolized, creating several new languages.