Hoklo-Hokkien loanwords in Indo./Malay and v.v.

[niuc]

... the kind of underlying similarities that define Sprachbunden (=speech areas).

Ah, great to know the term! Wikipedia entry for this also mentions Mainland Southeast Asia, though not specifically mentioning Hokkien or Malay.

[amhoanna]

Hokkien is a stealth member of the Sprachbund!

And is it just me, or do some dialects of Malay and b. Indo get a lot of their syntax from Hoklo and Hakka? My impression is that with KL Malay, I could just "plug and play" using Hoklo, Cant or VN sentence patterns, but Sabah Malay and Std. b. Indo don't seem to be the same way.

[niuc]

My impression is that with KL Malay, I could just "plug and play" using Hoklo, Cant or VN sentence patterns, but Sabah Malay and Std. b. Indo don't seem to be the same way.

From my limited experience talking with Malays in KL, most didn't speak standard Malay and used a lot of English words. I didn't really notice but it wouldn't surprise me that it could absorb those patterns. You are right that Standard Indonesian is less "flexible" in this regard.

[Ah-bin]

This is a question that has fascinated me for months now. I’ve been learning Malay from some old books J.W. Boyd-Walker’s “Colloquial Malay” (1944), and L.A. Lezer’s “Het Omgangs Maleisch” (Colloquial Malay - 1941). These books teach the low or bazaar form of Malay (and pre-date the invention of standard Indonesian), which differs from Baba Malay mainly in pronunciation and vocabulary. In many cases the Malay sentences are merely Hokkien sentences relexified with Malay vocabulary.

The three Hokkien constructions it uses are:

Tióh = kena
Hō• = kasi
Punya = ê

Dia kena pukol. = I tióh phah. He got hit.

Saya kasi dia tulis surat. Wá hō• i siá phoe. = I made him write a letter.

Saya punya buku di sana. Wá ê chhe•h tī hó-péng. My book is there.

These constructions didn't exist in the Classical Malay which became the grammatical base for the new standard Malay and Indonesian, so they were relegated to "non-standard".

As far as I know, Jakarta Malay (Melayu Betawi) also has these constructions, no surprise when you consider that Batavia was largely a Chinese-inhabited city in the past. Leonard Blusse’s “Strange Company” discusses the Chinese history of Batavia in detail. I know it’s not “correct” as far as the standard that is now laid down, but this kind of Malay has a long history of its own, and as Amhoanna has noted, it is very easy to learn to speak non-standard Malay simply by replacing Hokkien words with Malay words (except for the inversion of adjective and noun).

我 昨甲 咩拉友 媽參 沙媽 烏儂 支那 豬仔
Gua chakap Melayu macham sama orang Cina tuah…..haha (I wasn't implying anything by choice of characters "tu-a" just came out as "piglet" first when i typed it in)

It must sound awful to Malays or Indonesians who are fond of their national standards, but it's so tempting to learn to speak like that because you can learn in a matter of weeks, without having to worry about complicated verbal prefixes.

[SimL]

I'm posting from a blackberry that I was told to start using by my employer. Haha, looks like modern technology does have its advantages! I've said this before, but when you talk like this, you sound just like my grandmother when she was out in public talking to Indians or Malays in the "lingua franca" of that age - Bazar Malay". It's very "evocative" for me .

[amhoanna]

So how far back does Bazaar Malay go? Did it evolve out of the Malay lingua franca used in Nusantara, say, before the Portuguese arrived?

[Ah-bin]

I think it probably goes back as far as the first settlements of Chinese there. The Portuguese didn't escape Hokkienisation either. Surprise suprise, the Kristangs (Baba Portuguese) of Malacca have the same constructions:

se = punya = e
Yo sa kaza = Gua punya rumah

dah = kasi = hō∙
dah eli bai = kasi dia pigi

acah = kena = tióh (the original word means "to obtain", more like "dapat" or "than", so is different from tióh)
Eli ja achah pankada = Dia sudah kena pukol

[niuc]

Interesting discussions!

As far as I know, Jakarta Malay (Melayu Betawi) also has these constructions, no surprise when you consider that Batavia was largely a Chinese-inhabited city in the past.

Living in Jakarta from 1991 to 2001 and still visiting every year, I has only heard Bahasa Betawi on tv. It seems that only Betawi people use it and they are now minority in Jakarta. However, Bahasa Betawi does have big influence on the daily language of Jakarta, a non-standard version of Indonesian, and through it Hokkien pronouns such as "gua"/"gue" and "lu". Betawi culture incorporates Chinese influence, as can be seen e.g. on its bride's headdress. And it is heavily influenced by Javanese, Sundanese and other cultures & languages. I'd say that Hokkien constructions are less obvious in Betawi than in Melayu Pasar.

It must sound awful to Malays or Indonesians who are fond of their national standards

Many Indonesians (most for Jakarta) do not speak standard Indonesian, neither most in tv programs except news. Yet Melayu Pasar still sounds awful to them, not because it's not standard, but because it sounds uneducated and uncool.

but it's so tempting to learn to speak like that because you can learn in a matter of weeks, without having to worry about complicated verbal prefixes.

Yes. Many elderly Singaporean Chinese and Indian can speak Bazaar Malay due to this. Sin Po was a Malay newspaper for Chinese in then Hindia Belanda, and probably it used Melayu Pasar. It was the first to publish the text of Indonesia Raya that would become the national anthem.
http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_Po

[amhoanna]

Met a 55-ish Jakartan-born Indo-Dutchman (Indo-European? ) today who said his b. Indo was limited to "Bazaar Malay". After he spoke some, it turned out that he was just speaking B. Indo with a limited grasp of affixes. No possessive "punya". And no Betawi. But he called it Bazaar Malay.

Lots of login difficulties recently. Having to log in repeatedly, logging in only to see the log-in screen and have to log in again, random log-outs, etc. Am I the only one?

[niuc]

So you speak Malay/Indonesian with him?

About login difficulties, I have not encountered it.