Native to Indonesia ISO 639-3 max Region North Maluku | Native speakers 700,000 (2001) Glottolog nort2828 | |
Language family Creole language, Austronesian languages | ||
North Moluccan Malay (also known as Ternate Malay) is a language spoken in Ternate, Tidore and Halmahera islands, North Maluku for intergroup communications, and in the Sula Islands. The local name of the language is Bahasa Pasar, and the name Ternate Malay is also used, after the main ethnic group speaking the language. Since North Moluccan Malay is used only for spoken communication, there is no standard orthography.
Contents
This creole resembles Manado Malay, but with different accents and vocabulary. A large percentage of its vocabulary is borrowed from Ternatean, such as, ngana "you (sg.)", ngoni "you (pl.)", bifi "ant" and ciri "to fall".
Vowels
The vowel system of North Moluccan Malay consists of five vowel phonemes and five diphthongs.
The five diphthongs are /ai/, /ae/, /ao/, /oi/ and /ei/.
Consonants
North Moluccan Malay has eighteen consonants and two semivowels.
Personal Pronouns
Personal pronouns in North Moluccan Malay only distinguish between person (first, second and third person) and number (singular and plural). Some pronouns can also be used to show respect to other speakers.
Politeness
The use of the first person singular pronouns kita and saya is dependent on the speech situation. Kita is used when talking to others of the same or lower age, rank or status. On the other hand, saya is used in more formal situations or when conversing with someone with a higher rank or status, to show respect to the other person.
The second person singular and plural pronouns, ngana and ngoni also share a similar distinction. Ngana is used to refer to an addressee if they of the same or lower age, rank or status. Otherwise speakers may use personal names or kinship terms to refer to the addressee. Alternatively, the plural second person pronoun ngoni can occasionally be used to refer to a single addressee respectfully, although it is typically reserved for addressing a group of people.
These distinctions are demonstrated in example (1) where the speaker telling his friends of a situation where he explains to a woman that he does not want to accept money for helping to carry her shopping onto the bus. Since he is talking to his friends he refers to himself as kita, but because he is not familiar with the woman he uses the more respectful saya to refer to himself and ngoni to address her.
Full and shortened forms
For pronouns with a full and shortened form, the two forms may be used interchangeably in most contexts. However, following the conjunction deng or prepositions (such as di, ka, dari or pa) only the full form may be used. This is seen in example (2) where the short form de is used except following the preposition pa, where the full forms dia and torang appear instead:
In addition, the shortened forms do not appear post-verbally (i.e. after predicates). Hence in the following example tong cannot appear after the verb bunu "kill", only the full form torang is allowed:
It should be noted that the full form of the first person plural pronoun torang is actually a shortening of kitorang which is sometimes used by older speakers however younger speakers rarely use this form.
The only exceptions to the two restrictions mentioned above is when the pronoun is part of a Y pe X possessive construction in which case the shortened form may be used as the possessor Y. Example (4) shows a possessive Y pe X construction containing the first person plural short form pronoun dong occurring after a preposition pa:
Similarly, example (5) shows the third person singular short form pronoun de occurring after the verb iko "follow" also as part of a Y pe X possessive construction. This contrasts with the use of the full form dia after the second instance of iko, where the pronoun is no longer part of a possessive construction: