Social:Bangka Malay

Short description: Malayic language spoken in Indonesia

Bangka Malay
Bahasa Bangka
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Sumatra
Native speakers	340,000 (2000 census)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (disputed) Malayic Bangka Malay
Dialects	Mentok Belinyu Sungailiat Koba Toboali Lom
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mfb
Glottolog	bang1365

Bangka or Bangka Malay, is a Malayic language spoken in Indonesia, specifically on the Island of Bangka in the Bangka Belitung Islands of Sumatra. There are several dialects of Bangka Malay, including Mentok, Belinyu, Sungailiat, Koba, Toboali and Lom (Belom, Mapor). The Lom community has lived separately from mainstream Malay and is known for refusing Islam. Bangka Malay has a distinct vocabulary, grammar and phonology from other Malay languages.

Phonology

Consonants

Bangka Malay has 19 consonants.

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m		n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p		t	t͡ʃ	k	ʔ
	voiced	b		d	d͡ʒ	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless			s
	voiced			z
Approximant			l		j	w
Trill				r

Notes:

• In writing, the following phonemes are represented as thus:
  • /ŋ/ is ⟨ng⟩
  • /ɲ/ is ⟨ny⟩
  • /t͡ʃ/ is ⟨c⟩
  • /d͡ʒ/ is ⟨j⟩
  • /ʔ/ is ⟨k⟩
• /ʔ/ only occurs root-finally.
• Unlike Standard Malay and Indonesian, Bangka Malay has no /h/ phoneme.
• Final /ʔ/ in some root words in Bangka Malay correspond to Standard Malay/Indonesian /h/ such as Bangka Malay tarok /taroʔ/ which corresponds to Standard Malay/Indonesian taruh /taruh/ "to place".

Vowels

Bangka Malay possesses 6 phonemic vowels /i, ə, e, a, o, u/.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open		a

Notes:

• In writing, /e/ and /ə/ are both represented as ⟨e⟩.
• Final /a/ in Baku Malay/Indonesian correspond to /ə/ in Bangka Malay, so Baku Malay/Indonesian ada /ada/ "to have" corresponds to Bangka Malay ade /adə/.
• Baku Malay/Indonesian /i/ and /u/ in closed syllables correspond to lower /e/ and /o/ in Bangka Malay, so Baku Malay/Indonesian pasir /pasir/ "sand" and taruh /taruh/ "to place" correspond to Bangka Malay paser /paser/ and tarok /taroʔ/.

Morphology

Verb-deriving affixes

In Bangka Malay, there are four types of verb-deriving affixes, which are:

1. The interchangeable nasal prefixes, ngeN- /ŋəN-/ and N- /N-/
2. The be- /bə-/ prefix (with a ber- [bər-] allomorph before vowel-initial roots)
3. The te- /tə-/ prefix (with a ter- [tər-] allomorph before vowel roots)
4. The applicative suffixes, -ek /-eʔ/ and -kan /-kan/

Noun-deriving affixes

Bangka Malay has one noun-deriving affix:

1. The pe- -an /pə- -an/ circumfix (with a per- -an [pər- -an] allomorph with vowel-initial roots)

References

Bibliography

• Miyake, Yoshimi; Sarman, Hendry; Fithrorozi (31 March 2022). "A preliminary study of Belitung Malay". NUSA: Linguistic studies of languages in and around Indonesia 72: 17. https://tufs.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/1453. Retrieved 2 January 2024.