Sri Lankan Malay (also known as ''Sri Lankan Creole Malay'', ''Bahasa Melayu'', ''Ja basawa'' and ''Java mozhi'') is a

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...

spoken in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

, formed as a mixture of Sinhala and Shonam (Sri Lanka Muslim

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nati ...

), with

Malay Malay may refer to: Languages * Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore ** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century ** Indonesi ...

being the major

lexifier A lexifier is the language that provides the basis for the majority of a pidgin or creole language's vocabulary (lexicon). Often this language is also the dominant, or superstrate language, though this is not always the case, as can be seen in th ...

. It is traditionally spoken by the Sri Lankan Malays and among some

Sinhalese Sinhala may refer to: * Something of or related to the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka * Sinhalese people * Sinhala language, one of the three official languages used in Sri Lanka * Sinhala script, a writing system for the Sinhala language ** Sinha ...

Hambantota Hambantota ( si, හම්බන්තොට, ta, அம்பாந்தோட்டை) is the main town in Hambantota District, Southern Province, Sri LankaThe prominent Malays (මැලේ) most part of the population is to be partly des ...

. Today, the number of speakers of the language have dwindled considerably but it has continued to be spoken notably in the Hambantota District of Southern Sri Lanka, which has traditionally been home to many Sri Lankan Malays.

History

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch who had occupied Batavia of Java exiled native rebels and royalty to Sri Lanka, and they made their first settlements in Hambantota and Kirinde. Later on, the Dutch also garrisoned their military, composed of Malays, in other parts of Sri Lanka. As a result, some scholars even believe that SLM is closely associated with the Batavian dialect of Malay. Others have proposed that Sri Lankan Malay originates from eastern Indonesia, based on similarities with Manado Malay and North Moluccan Malay (Ternate Malay). Today, Sri Lankan Malay (SLM), is spoken in the Central (Kandy), Southern (Hambantota and Kirinde) and Western (Slave Island) provinces of the country. The Malay population living in Kinniya and Mutur no longer speak Malay and have resorted to either Sri Lankan Tamil or Sri Lankan Moor Tamil (SLMT). The majority of the speakers today reside in Northern

Colombo Colombo ( ; si, කොළඹ, translit=Koḷam̆ba, ; ta, கொழும்பு, translit=Koḻumpu, ) is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo me ...

. The exact number of speakers is unknown and there are no linguistic statistics available on the number of speakers living in or outside of Sri Lanka. Based on the ethnic statistics of Sri Lankan Malays, the estimation of the number of Sri Lankan Malay speakers is probably between 30,000 and 40,000.

Variation

As the language has been influenced by Sinhala, Tamil and English, SLM speakers constantly code-switch between SLM and either one or two of the other mentioned languages. As a result, SLM within the three mentioned provinces, have taken a distinctive character of their own. Sebastian Nydorf has produced “A Grammar of Upcountry Malay” highlighting the said regional variations, however, his efforts have been criticised for having widening disparities within the language. Due to these differences, there are contesting opinions among the SLM speakers themselves: while some speakers say that Malay in Kirinde and Hambantota is of higher status due to its closeness to archaic Malay, others claim that Malay of Slave Island is more vibrant in its evolution, especially in its use of slang which has even been adopted by the Moors. A result of this variation within spoken SLM is a call for standardisation in the written variety, following ''Bahasa Kumpulan'' (standardised Malay in Malaysia and Indonesia). Malays who first arrived in Sri Lanka, keeping with their customs and practices, used the ''gundul'' alphabet for writing, which was the Arabic script with five additional letters. This practice had survived until the mid-1940s, and had only been used among specific individuals (such as religious/communal figures) and served limited and exclusive purposes as a minority language within the country. For instance, Malay bills of marriage (''kavin'') were drawn in ''gundul''. Presently, however, both “Standard Malay” (SM) and SLM use the Romanised script for writing purposes. Some of the advocates of the Romanised script claim that using English following (their interpretation of) Standard British English must be the only way of writing Malay. For instance, using ‘ch’ instead of the letter ‘c’ for the /ch/ sound (failing to realise that ‘ch’ could also produce the /k/ sound). Other users and scholars of SLM claim that Sinhala, being a phonetical alphabet, would be better suited for writing Malay as it would better capture Malay pronunciation. Much studies have not been done on the particular variety of SLM but there are debates that SLM is endangered. “ Much work remains to be done on the various varieties of SLM”. In Colombo community, parents encourage their children to speak in English therefore SLM is endangered in that community . Concerning the Cosmopolitan Colombo community, where the level of education is high, the community typically shows strong linguistic vitality in SLM in the oldest to middle generations and rapidly decreasing linguistic competence (to nil) in the vernacular in the young generation. In sharp contrast is the speech community of Kirinda, with low education and employment levels who still have SLM as a dominant language. The current thrust in the SLM community is that some segments of the community especially those in Kirinda, believe that SLM language must be encouraged, taught, and strengthened while others in the Colombo community believe that Malaysian or Indonesian Malay should be taught as means of revitalising SLM by converging it with a more standardised variety. The Kirinda community in

is one of the few communities that speak Sri Lankan Malay as their dominant language. Although children in the Kirinda community remain, monolingual speakers of Sri Lankan Malay, before they enter primary school, the speakers of Sri Lankan Malay today are insufficient to maintain the language in future generations. In some communities, Sri Lankan Malay is clearly endangered but there is a debate about whether it is endangered overall since some communities have robust first language speakers. Trilingualism is achieved by the SLM community due to contact with the larger group of Tamil and the majority of Sinhalese speakers because Sinhala and Tamil were adstrates. Therefore, the restructuring process that occurs in SLM has several grammatical categories that are absent from other Malay varieties, but are found in both Sinhala and

. Considering that mixed languages typically show lexical items predominantly from one source, and grammatical material predominantly from another, the SLM lexicon is primarily of PMD origin while grammatical features are derived from Sinhala and Tamil. Therefore, the use of

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...

s is largely due to a process of typological congruence of Lankan adstrates.

Dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...

and

accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...

are marked by suffixes attached to a noun (naƞ-DAT yaƞ-ACC). The verb-final order follows the Sinhala and Tamil typology. This is illustrated as follows: ni aanak-naƞ baek buku-yaƞ attu aada This student-DAT good book-ACC one exist “This student has a good book.” As in Tamil, accusative tends to mark

definiteness In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those which are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical d ...

in SLM. Inni kendera -yaƞ bapi This chair-ACC takes. go “Take ''this'' chair away.” A direct influence of Sinhala is seen in Ablative

syncretism Syncretism () is the practice of combining different beliefs and various school of thought, schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or religious assimilation, assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in t ...

marker (to indicate source) riɧ. Market-riƞ ais-tra baaru ikkaƞ billi bawa Market-ABL ice-NEG new fish buy bring Get me some fresh fish from the market The SLM possessive case suffix is ‘pe’, derived form of Malaya punya “to possess” distinguishes a feature of contact Malay varieties such as Bazaar Malay and Baba Malay. goppe tumman go-yaƞ e-tolak My friend pushed me As an archaic feature of Malay lingua franca, it is most likely that this feature was maintained from the original varieties of the SLM community and its adaptation led to the development of a new case that distinguishes SLM from its adstrates.

References

External links

Sri Lankan Creole Malay profile at the Endangered Languages Project
{{British Ceylon period topics Languages of Sri Lanka Sri Lankan Malays Malay-based pidgins and creoles

History

Variation

References

Further reading

External links