The Sri Lankan Malays, Melayu Bahasa and changing language attitudes (II)

Melayu Bahasa and changing language attitudes among the Malays

The local Malay language (Melayu Bahasa) differs somewhat from the standard Malay language of Indonesia (Bahasa Indonesia) and Malaysia (Bahasa Malaysia). Formerly a thriving language, it is today gradually dying out and being superseded by Sinhala.

Hussainmiya (1987) believes the Sri Lankan variety of Malay to be descended from a colloquial dialect known variously as Batavian Malay (Omong Jakarta), Low Malay, Bazaar Malay etc, a Malay pidgin that originated in the coastal areas of Java. This however seems to have been considerably influenced by the local languages, especially the Tamil spoken by the Moor.

Among the phonological differences between standard Malay and the local variant are the dropping of the aspirate, whether initial, medial, or final, the replacement of a final dental nasal by a velar nasal, doubling of consonants and the elision of the vowels in the case of Sri Lankan Malay.

De-aspiration is pronounced in Sri Lankan Malay.

Cf. SLM ati ‘Heart’ (SM. hati)

Irup ‘suck’ (SM. hirup)

As is the doubling of consonants

Cf.SLM abbis ‘finish’ (SM. habis)

Kirras ‘hard’ (SM. keras)

And the replacement of dental nasals by velar nasals.

Cf.SLM. jalaṅ ‘road’ (SM. jalan)

Tawoṅ ‘year’ (SM. tahun)

As for syntax, there exist significant differences between Sri Lanka Malay and standard Malay, a notable example being that whereas in standard Malay adjectives invariably follow the noun, in Sri Lankan Malay they precede the noun.

Cf. SLM. Besar rumah ‘a big house’ which occurs for SM rumah besar.

Hussainmiya (1987) attributes the grammatical differences between standard and local Malay to the influence of the variant form of Tamil spoken by the Moors. There can be little doubt that social intercourse and intermarriage between the Malays and their Moorish co-religionists has taken place since at least late Dutch times, so that the impact of Sona Tamil on local Malay is not difficult to comprehend. The influence of Sinhala on local Malay grammar however also can not be ruled out.

As for Malay literary activity, Hussainmiya (1987) has shown that the local Malays belonged to a fairly literate society and that although much of their literature including the Hikayats (epics and romances in pros) and Syairs (classic poetry) have had their origins in the Malayan peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago, some of the works such as the Hikayat Indera Kuraisy and the Siyar Syaikh Fadlun seen to have had an indigenous origin. Pantuns or traditional Malays quatrains sung at festive occasions such as weddings and circumcision ceremonies have also been popular among the Malays. Sri Lankan Malay texts have been traditionally written in the Jawi or unvocalised Arabic script known to local Malays as the Gundul (lit. hairless) script. This script is similar to the Arabiic script, save for the existence of additional characters denoting sound such as p, g and c lacking in Arabic and found occurring in Malay. There can be no doubt that in the olden days the Malay language was thriving one among the local Malay community, so much so that there even existed separate newspaper in the Malay language to cater to the needs of the Malay- speaking population. For instance, Alamat Lankapuri, a Malay newspaper in Gundul script was published fortnightly in 1869/1870 in Colombo and again 1877/1878. Another Malay fortnightly newspaper, Wajah Selong, also in gundul script was published from 1895-1899.

It is however today very evident that the local Malay speech is gradually dying out and being superseded by Sinhala. The adoption of the Sinhala has been facilitated not only by education in the Sinhala vernacular but also by the increasingly common intermarriage with Sinhalese folk and extremely cordial relations that have subsisted between the two communities. Many Malays are also conversant with the Sri Lanka Moor dialect of Tamil (Sona Tamil) due t close social association with their Moorish co-religionists.

There have of course been numerous attempts at reviving or rather preserving and popularising the Malay language by such organisation as the conference of Sri Lankan Malays (Konferansi Melayu Sri Lanka) and the Sri Lankan Malay confederation (Konfeerasi Rakyat Melayu Lankapuri). Whether this will meet with success yet remains to be seen. Although the conservative older generation have preserved their Malay speech to a large extent, the language is spoken by the younger generation in only a few areas such as Kandy, Badulla, Bandarawela, Wattala, Ja-ela and Hambantota, where sizeable concentration of Malays are found.

At any rate, the Sri Lankan have been far more conservative, linguistically, than their brethren domiciled in South Africa (the so called cape Malays) who have had similar origins but have adopted Afrikaans (an offshoot of Dutch spoken by other Muslim communities in the country) in preference to their native Malay. This is despite the fact that these cape Malays comprise a community more than three times as a large as the Sri Lankan Malay population.