Ternate is a language of northern Maluku, eastern Indonesia. It is spoken by the , who inhabit the island of

Ternate Ternate is a city in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and an island in the Maluku Islands. It was the ''de facto'' provincial capital of North Maluku before Sofifi on the nearby coast of Halmahera became the capital in 2010. It is off the ...

and some other areas of the archipelago, including the western coast of

Halmahera Halmahera, formerly known as Jilolo, Gilolo, or Jailolo, is the largest island in the Maluku Islands. It is part of the North Maluku province of Indonesia, and Sofifi, the capital of the province, is located on the west coast of the island. Ha ...

, Hiri,

Obi #REDIRECT Obi {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from ambiguous title ...

, Kayoa, and the Bacan Islands. Historically, it served as the primary language of the

Sultanate of Ternate The Sultanate of Ternate (Jawi alphabet: كسلطانن ترنتاي), previously also known as the Kingdom of Gapi is one of the oldest Muslim kingdoms in Indonesia besides Tidore, Jailolo, and Bacan. The Ternate kingdom was established by M ...

, famous for its role in the spice trade. It has established itself as a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

of the

North Maluku North Maluku ( id, Maluku Utara) is a province of Indonesia. It covers the northern part of the Maluku Islands, bordering the Pacific Ocean to the north, the Halmahera Sea to the east, the Molucca Sea to the west, and the Seram Sea to the sou ...

province. A North Halmahera language, it is unlike most languages of Indonesia which belong to the Austronesian language family. This language should be distinguished from Ternate Malay (North Moluccan Malay), a local Malay-based creole which it has heavily influenced. Ternate serves as the first language of ethnic Ternateans, mainly in the rural areas, while Ternate Malay is nowadays used as a means of interethnic and trade communication, particularly in the urban part of the island. More recently, there has been a

language shift Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are percei ...

from Ternate towards Malay. It can be assumed that its role as a lingua franca has greatly waned. While the Ternate people are scattered all over eastern Indonesia, it is not known how many expatriate Ternateans still speak the language. In Indonesian, it is generally known as ''bahasa Ternate'', however the term ''bahasa Ternate asli'' is sometimes used to distinguish it from Ternate Malay. The language has been influential as a source of lexical and grammatical borrowing for North Moluccan Malay, the local variant of Malay, which has given rise to other eastern Indonesian offshoots of Malay, such as

Manado Malay Manado Malay, or simply the Manado language, is a creole language spoken in Manado, the capital of North Sulawesi province in Indonesia, and the surrounding area. The local name of the language is , and the name Minahasa Malay is also used, afte ...

Written records

The Ternate language was recorded with the

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and th ...

since the 15th century, while the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

is used in modern writing. Ternate and

Tidore Tidore ( id, Kota Tidore Kepulauan, lit. "City of Tidore Islands") is a city, island, and archipelago in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia, west of the larger island of Halmahera. Part of North Maluku Province, the city includes the islan ...

are notable for being the only indigenous non-Austronesian languages of the region to have established literary traditions prior to first European contact. Other languages of the North Halmahera region, which were not written down until the arrival of Christian missionaries, have received significant lexical influence from Ternate.

Classification

Ternate is a member of the North Halmahera language family, which is classified by some as part of a larger West Papuan family, a proposed linking of the North Halmahera languages with the Papuan languages of the

Bird's Head Peninsula The Bird's Head Peninsula ( Indonesian: ''Kepala Burung'', nl, Vogelkop) or Doberai Peninsula (''Semenanjung Doberai''), is a large peninsula that makes up the northwest portion of the island of New Guinea, comprising the Indonesian provinces ...

. It is most closely related to the

Tidore language Tidore is a language of North Maluku, Indonesia, spoken by the Tidore people. The language is centered on the island of Tidore, but it is also spoken in some areas of the neighbouring Halmahera. A North Halmahera language, it is unlike most lan ...

, which is native to the southern neighboring island. The distinction between Ternate and Tidore appears to be based on sociopolitical factors rather than linguistic differences. While many authors have described these varieties as separate languages, some classifications identify them as dialects of a single language, collectively termed as either "Ternate" or "Ternate-Tidore".

Phonology

Ternate, like other North Halmahera languages, is not a

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emp ...

Consonants

Vowels

References

{{Languages of Indonesia Languages of Indonesia North Halmahera languages