Sounds Cocos

Lisa Lim & Umberto Ansaldo National University of Singapore, Singapore E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

predominantly for basic work-oriented communication, ABSTRACT the latter being English-based and resembling the This paper is a description of Cocos Malay, the variety of pre-ejaan baru (‘new spelling’) system of Standard Malay spoken on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Malay, but also incorporating major concessions to local Indian Ocean. Based on a corpus collected during recent pronunciation. fieldwork on the Islands, the Cocos Malay sound system is presented, highlighting, in particular, a characteristic 2. CORPUS Cocos intonation pattern, as well as the Cocos Malay speakers from three generations were inter-generational differences observed. sampled: those of the oldest generation are around 80 years of age, those in the middle generation are around 1. INTRODUCTION 40 years of age, and those in the younger generation are The Cocos (Keeling) Islands comprise a 27-island coral in their early to mid 20s. The data collected include a atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean, their closest word list, as well as naturally-occuring conversation. neighbours being 900 km northeast. Cocos Malay, a little known and scarcely researched 3. THE COCOS MALAY SOUND SYSTEM variety of Malay, is spoken by the 450-strong A description of the Cocos Malay sound system will be community of Malays which has been resident on the presented during the conference. Cocos (Keeling) Islands for the past two centuries. It is a unique contact variety as, due to geographical and 4. CONCLUSIONS historical circumstances, it has been isolated from other As will be seen from the sound system, the recent Malay varieties, and has been heavily influenced in its introduction to the Islands of English-medium education history by Chinese and Javanese, and, only more as well as Bahasa Indonesia as a second language has recently, English and Bahasa Indonesia. Patterns found had radical effects on the language, including its in such a variety (e.g. [1]) shed light on processes on pronunciation, evident in the younger generation. With language contact, and provide a good control for Cocos Malay adapting to a rapidly-changing comparison in investigating other ‘mixed’ varieties of socio-political environment, there are doubts if the Malay such as Bazaar Malay and Baba Malay found in variety will survive even the present generation, given Singapore. Previous work concentrated mainly on the size and sociolinguistic vulnerability of the socio-historical aspects [2], and syntax [3], with only community. passing mention of the sound system [3] – as with most language descriptions which provide minimal details of REFERENCES their phonetic properties, leaving an important aspect of [1] U. Ansaldo and L. Lim, “Cocos Malay: Fieldwork their grammar undescribed [4]. This aspect is in fact notes from a little island”, paper presented at the 6th particularly significant in this case because, until less International Symposium on Malay/Indonesian than three decades ago, Cocos Malay had been almost Linguistics (ISMIL6), 3-5 August 2002, Bintan Island, exclusively a spoken language, with script used Indonesia, 2002. only for religious purposes, and Roman script [2] A. Welsh, “The history of the Cocos ”, paper presented at the 3rd annual conference of the Victorian Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 1-2 July 1999, University of Melbourne, , 1999.

[3] A.D. Lapsley, Cocos Malay Syntax, MA dissertation, Monash University, 1983.

[4] I. Maddieson, “Phonetic fieldwork”, in Linguistic fieldwork, P. Newman and M. Ratliff, eds, pp.211-229, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.