Cocos Malay


Cocos Malay is a post-creolized variety of Malay, spoken by the Cocos Malays of Home Island, Christmas Island, and those originally from the Cocos Islands currently living in Sabah.
Cocos Malay derives from the Malay trade languages of the 19th century, specifically the Betawi language, with a strong additional Javanese influence. Malay is offered as a second language in schools, and Malaysian has prestige status; both are influencing the language, bringing it more in line with standard Malay. There is also a growing influence of English, considering the Islands having been an Australian territory and globalization drifting modern terms into the daily parlance. In 2009, Cocos Malay students were prohibited from using their own language and failure to comply resulted in punishment in the form of "speaking tickets" which meant that they were required to carry out cleaning duties in school. However, this form of language restriction ended by 2011.
It has the following characteristics:

Vowels

FrontCentralBack
Highiu
Mideəo
Lowa

Consonants

BilabialDentalAlveolarPost-
alveolar
PalatalVelarUvularGlottal
Plosive &
affricate
p b dk g
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Fricatives ʁ 2
Approximant w j
Lateral
approximant
l

There are three ways in which Cocos Malay differs from Standard Malay and Indonesian:
  1. The uvular which always occurs intervocalically is present in Coco Malay but not in Standard Malay or Indonesian.
  2. Certain consonants, , which occur in Standard Malay are not present in Cocos Malay.
  3. With regard to the amongst the three languages, the in Cocos Malay is often dropped especially in the world-initial position. Examples include: