Betawi language
| Betawi | |
|---|---|
| Bahasa Betawi | |
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Jakarta |
|
Native speakers
|
approx. 5 million (2000 census) |
|
Malay-based creole
|
|
| Dialects | Cocos Malay |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | beta1252 |
Betawi Malay, also known as Jakartan Malay or Batavian Malay, is the spoken language of the Betawi people in Jakarta, Indonesia. It is the native language of perhaps 5 million people; a precise number is difficult due to the vague use of the name.
Betawi is a Malay-based creole, and closely related to the Malay language. The Betawi language has large amounts of Hokkien Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, and Dutch loanwords. It replaced the earlier Portuguese-based creole of Batavia, Mardijker. The first-person pronoun gue (I or me) and second-person pronoun lu (you) and numerals such as cepek (a hundred), gopek (five hundred), and seceng (a thousand) are from Hokkien, whereas the words ente (you) and ane (me) are derived from Arabic. Cocos Malay, a Malay creole spoken in Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Australia and Sabah, Malaysia is derived from an earlier form of Betawi Malay.
Today Betawi Malay is a popular informal language in Indonesia and used as the base of Indonesian slang and commonly spoken in Jakarta TV soap operas. The name Betawi stems from Batavia, the official name of Jakarta during the era of the Dutch East Indies.
Betawi developed as a Malay-based creole whose speakers were descendants of Chinese men and Balinese women in Batavia. These descendants converted to Islam and spoke a pidgin that was later creolized, and then decreolized incorporating many elements from Javanese and Sundanese (Uri Tadmor 2013).
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