Kupang Malay or Kupang language is a Malay-based creole language spoken in

Kupang Kupang (, ), formerly known as Koepang, is the capital of the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. At the 2020 Indonesian census, 2020 Census, it had a population of 442,758;Badan Pusat Statistik, Jakarta, 2021. the official estimate as o ...

East Nusa Tenggara East Nusa Tenggara (; ) is the southernmost province of Indonesia. It comprises the eastern portion of the Lesser Sunda Islands, facing the Indian Ocean in the south and the Flores Sea in the north, with a total land area of 47,238.07 km2. It cons ...

, which is on the west end of

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. Kupang Malay is presently used as a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

for inter-ethnic communication, and it also has native speakers. It is based on archaic Malay mixed mostly with

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

, and other local languages. It is similar to

Ambonese Malay Ambonese Malay or simply Ambonese is a Malay-based creole language spoken on Ambon Island in the Maluku Islands of Eastern Indonesia. It was first brought by traders from Western Indonesia, then developed when the Dutch Empire colonised the M ...

with several differences in vocabulary and accent. Its grammatical system resembles other Eastern Indonesian Malay creoles. Kupang Malay originated sometime before the 17th century. Kupang Malay has Rotinese influence.

Phonology

Like Indonesian, words in Kupang Malay are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable. Some words are stressed on the final syllable as they would be in their source languages. This results in some contrastive stress.

Vowels

The vowels of Kupang Malay are shown in the chart below. Unlike in Indonesian, there is no schwa in Kupang Malay. The "ia ,"ie, "io",and iu,reduces to ''iya, iye, iyo, iyu'' or nua, oa, os becomes ''nuwa'', ''woa, wos''.

Consonants

The consonants of Kupang Malay are shown in the chart below. Kupang Malay has intervocalic glottal stops in some words from which originate from other local languages or Arabic. * The lack of foreign letters e.g. "z","v",and"q" For example; * ''Zaman'' → * ''Video'' → * ''Qatar'' →

Pronouns

The

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but so ...

s in Kupang Malay differ from Indonesian as shown in the table below.

Morphology

Reduplication is frequent. Reduplication can express several things such as: variety, similarity, repetition, non-urgency, and aimlessness.

Grammar

The

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...

of Kupang Malay is mixed Malay and the

Helong language Helong (; Chosŏn'gŭl: 화룡; Hangul: 허룽) is a county-level city in southeastern Jilin province, Northeast China. It is under the administration of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. In January 2024, several thousand North Korean mig ...

. Possessives are formed by placing a possessive particle, ''pung'' after the possessor and before the possessed item.

External links

References

{{Languages of Indonesia Malay-based pidgins and creoles Languages of Indonesia Malay dialects