Concealment, Maintenance and Renaissance: language and ethnicity in the Moluccan community in The Netherlands (original) (raw)

Language Documentation and Maintenance Programs for Moluccan Languages in The Netherlands

IJSL 151:195-219, 2001

This paper reports on an unusual situation in which the documentation of endangered and moribund languages of the Moluccas region of eastern Indonesia is being undertaken in a migrant community rather than in the indigenous setting. This region has the highest level of language endangerment in Indonesia and perhaps throughout the Austronesian language family. However, the task of documentation is now severely restricted in the homeland because of interethnic violence, which erupted in the regional capital of Ambon City in late 1998 and has since spread throughout the Moluccan islands. Research by the authors among the community of Moluccan migrants in the Netherlands has uncovered remaining speakers of approximately twenty-®ve languages indigenous to the Moluccas. At least three of these languages (Amahei, Kamarian, and Seruan) are both locally and globally endangered and the presence of remaining speakers in the immigrant setting may provide the only opportunity to undertake salvage work.

Reclaiming Linguistic Patrimony:the case of Nusalaut, a Moluccan language in the Netherlands i

The Routledge Handbook of Asian Linguistics, 2022

The Moluccan community in the Netherlands has a complex history, which is closely intertwined with the struggle of the Dutch East Indies to gain independence and the machinations of the Netherlands to dodge it. On August 17 th 1945 the Republic of Indonesia declared its independence. It took until December 27 th 1949 before the Netherlands conceded and acknowledged the United States of Indonesia, a federation of the Republic of Indonesia and six other states, one of which is the state of East Indonesia. When in 1950 each state agreed to renounce its individual status and to dissolve into a unitary Republic of Indonesia, representatives of the South Moluccas Residency in the state of East Indonesia proclaimed a separate Republic of the South Moluccas:Republik Maluku Selatan (RMS). '[W]e, the people of Maluku, who live in the archipelago of thousand islands originate from the ALIF'URU, the aboriginal inhabitants of Maluku. … "Siwa' Rima" (or "Siwa' Lima") … is the basic structure of our "adat" society. ("Adat" is customary law or tradition). After … a conflict arose … our ancestors separated and dispersed through the archipelago of thousand islands, named Maluku' (Sahalessy nd:1). Bahasa tanah 'the language of the land' and the Nusalaut language Malay, the language of communication inherited from the colonial army, was generally acknowledged as the community's heritage language by educational professionals. (Florey and Van Engelenhoven 2001, Moro 2016). Nevertheless, the Moluccan community was aware of its traditional ethnolinguistic diversity. Mr. Sahalessy explained the existence of the many regional languages as follows: ' you give notice' (VH:36) 'YOU give (it to them) …' (Ps. 104:28) Na encoded the progressive aspect in Nusalaut. Van Hoëvell observed that, except for the first person plural inclusive and the third person plural, this particle merged with the pronominal subject agreement prefixes (Van Hoëvell 1877:25). In this specific context, original Nusalaut compares to Church Malay where most verbs can be inflected with the prefix meN-which encodes dynamicity of the verbal act (Van Engelenhoven 2011). Original Nusalaut Church Malay Liturgical Nusalaut (4a) ale no-soe~soeoe (b) engkau mem-basuh (c) jau soli 2SG 2SG.PRSP-RED~dive 2SG DYN-wash 2SG wash 'You will bathe' (VH:25) '… you wash…' (Ps.68:24) '… you wash…' (Ps.68:24

Reviewing Sepa Language Extinction of the Indigenous Peoples of Amahai, Moluccas, Indonesia

Technium Social Sciences Journal, 2021

Threat language can be found in various local languages in Indonesia, including the Sepa language of the Indigenous peoples of Amahai, Moluccas, where the nationalization of Indonesian is a threat to its extinction. This paper aims to look at the extinction of regional languages from the framework of modernization and contestation of regional languages with national languages. This study is conducted qualitatively, data collection based on interviews, literature study, and observation obtained from Raja Sepa, community leaders, customary stakeholders. Research shows that the language in Maluku is almost extinct in line with the narrowing of regional language spaces; the language has been abandoned by its speakers because of the process of modernization and migration. This study shows the need for revitalization of the Sepa language through facilitating the mapping of the Sepa language comprehensively, making the Sepa language dictionary, and integrating the Sepa language into the lo...

Language and culture on the north coast of New Guinea

American Anthropologist, 1992

Statistical analysis of variability in assemblages of material culture obtained at dzfferent villages on the North Coast of New Guinea indicates that similarities and differences among these assemblages are most strongly associated with geographic propinquity, irrespective of linguistic a@ities. When assemblage similarity is adjustedfor the effect of distance, diversity in material culture appears unrelated to the linguistic relationships of these communities. This study shows that similarity in material culture assemblages can mask marked heterogeneity in language. Language, however, isjequently used to index people in Melanesia on the assumption that language is a usejid key to their other human characteristics. This analysis does not lend support to this common practice, and it has implicationsfor how prehistoric cultural complexes in Melanesia are deJined and interpreted.

The former Portuguese Creole of Batavia and Tugu (Indonesia) . By Philippe Maurer

Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 2015

Reviewed by Alan N. Baxter (Universidade Federal da Bahia) This systematic account of the extinct Batavia/Tugu creole (B/T) builds on Schuchardt (1891). It comprises a linguistic description of B/T (Chapters 1-5), glossed translations of the texts studied (Chapter 6), a bi-directional lexicon (Chapters 7 and 8), text appendices, and images of old Batavia and Tugu. The linguistic study employs all known data of B/T-materials spanning four centuries, compiled in German, Dutch, and Malay, and not widely accessible. These include materials from Schuchardt (1891): Batavia Creole (henceforth B) data from the Nieuwe Woordenschat (1780) and Schuchardt's 19th-century Tugu texts (TS), as well as two 20th-century sources: a 1937 word list (TM) and the Wallace (1978) materials (TW). The appendices contain a facsimile of the grammar section of the Nieuwe Woordenschat, and a glossed transcription of a 1692 Pidgin Portuguese text, also in Schuchardt (1891). Chapter 1 presents the scope of the study and a brief history of the Batavia/ Tugu communities. Noting that these incorporated speakers from within the Indonesian archipelago and from as far afield as India, Maurer asserts that, typologically, B/T is closer to Malacca Creole Portuguese (MCP) than to the Indo-Portuguese creoles. Chapter 2 discusses the spelling of the data sources, proposes a phonemic spelling for the current study, and establishes hypothetic sound inventories for B/T: 8 phonetic vowels (5 contrasting, i.e. phonemic), and 18 phoneme consonants, thus strongly resembling the core inventory of MCP (Baxter 1988). Maurer also draws attention to a prominent feature of B/T. From Middle Portuguese and Malay, B/T has /tʃ / and /dʒ /. However, its only sibilant fricative is /s/, Ptg. /z/ being replaced with /dʒ /, e.g. kadju 'house < Ptg. casa ['kazə ].The occurrence of this affricate in medial position in B/T indicates greater influence from Malay than in MCP, which retains /z/. Chapter 3 describes the NP, VP and simple and complex sentences, contributing substantially to our knowledge of the typology of Southeast Asian Creole Portuguese (SEACP). The sections on the NP contain several highlights, including the detail given to determiners, noun reduplication, pronouns and possessives,

John Bowden - Local languages, local Malay, and Bahasa Indonesia A case study from North Maluku

2012

Many small languages from eastern Indonesia are threatened with extinction. While it is often assumed that 'Indonesian' is replacing the lost languages, in reality, local languages are being replaced by local Malay. In this paper I review some of the reasons for this in North Maluku. I review the directional system in North Maluku Malay and argue that features like the directionals allow those giving up local languages to retain a sense of local linguistic identity. Retaining such an identity makes it easier to abandon local languages than would be the case if people were switching to 'standard' Indonesian.

The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide

2017

The New Guinea Area is arguably the region with the highest level of language diversity on earth, in terms of both total number of languages, and number of apparently unrelated language families. On the basis of present knowledge, it is home to more than 1,300 languages, almost one fifth of the world's total number, belonging to upward of 40 distinct language families with no generally accepted wider phylogenetic links, as well as several dozen isolates 2. It is also the world's least documented linguistic region. Of Hammarström's (2010) list of the 27 least documented families (including isolates) in the world, 20 are located in this area. In some cases, an entire family is known only from a few short wordlists of its members. The region is also the locus of considerable language endangerment. Many of its languages are spoken by a few hundred or very few thousand people, and extensive pressure from larger languages is common, including from larger indigenous languages supplanting smaller languages, and from lingua francas such as Tok Pisin in the east and Papuan Malay in the west. For the exceptionally complex Sepik-Ramu basin, for example, Foley (this volume chapter 3) states that "virtually all languages within the Sepik-Ramu basin are endangered, some critically so" (Foley's emphasis). The sheer number of languages that are largely unknown to research, together with the rapid pace of language loss, means the complete phylogenetic and typological picture of the area may never be fully known. This volume sets out to give an overview of the languages, families and typology of this area on the basis of current knowledge.