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 Maluku Islands and was used as a tool by missionaries in Eastern Indonesia. Malay has been taught in schools and churches in Ambon, and because of this it has become a lingua franca in Ambon and its surroundings.

Christian speakers use Ambonese Malay as their mother tongue, while Muslims speak it as a second language as they have their own language. Muslims on Ambon Island particularly live in several areas in the city of Ambon, dominant in the Salahutu and Leihitu Peninsulas. While in the Lease Islands, the Christian Ambonese-speaking community is dominant in parts of Haruku, Saparua and Nusa Laut islands. Ambonese Malay has also become lingua franca in Buru, Seram, Geser-Gorom and the south-western Maluku Islands, though with different accents.

While originally derived from Malay, Ambonese Malay has been heavily influenced by European languages (Dutch and Portuguese) as well as the vocabularies or grammatical structures of indigenous languages. Muslims and Christian speakers tend to make different choices in vocabulary. Papuan Malay, a Malay creole spoken in the Indonesian part of New Guinea, is closely related to Ambonese Malay and is said to be a derivative of Ambonese Malay or Manado Malay or a mixture of both. According to Robert B. Allen and Rika Hayami-Allen, the eastern Indonesian forms of Malay have their roots in North Moluccan Malay.^[2]