North Moluccan Malay

North Moluccan Malay
Ternate Malay
Bahasa Pasar
Native toIndonesia
RegionNorth Maluku
Native speakers
700,000 (2001)[1]
Malay-based creole
  • Eastern Indonesia Malay
    • Manadoic Malay
      • North Moluccan Malay
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3max
Glottolognort2828

North Moluccan Malay (also known as Ternate Malay) is a Malay-based creole language spoken on Ternate, Tidore, Morotai, Halmahera, and Sula Islands in North Maluku for intergroup communications. The local name of the language is bahasa Pasar (literally 'market language'), and the name Ternate Malay is also used, after the main ethnic group speaking the language. It is commonly written using Indonesian orthography. One of its varieties is Sula Malay, which was formed with the influence of Ambonese Malay.[2]

A large percentage of this language's lexicon has been borrowed from Ternatean, such as, ngana 'you (sg.)', ngoni 'you (pl.)', bifi 'ant', and fuma 'stupid', and its syntax and semantics have received heavy influence from the surrounding West Papuan languages.[3] Other vernacular forms of Malay spoken in eastern Indonesia, such as Manado Malay and Papuan Malay, are said to be derived from an earlier form of North Moluccan Malay.[4]

  1. ^ North Moluccan Malay at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Duwila, Ety; Fernandez, Inyo Yos (2009). Kajian dialektologi diakronis enklave Melayu Bacan, Ternate, dan Sula di Provinsi Maluku Utara. Tesis S2 Linguistik (Thesis) (in Indonesian). Yogyakarta, Indonesia: Universitas Gadjah Mada.
  3. ^ Taylor, Paul Michael (1999). "Introduction" (PDF). F.S.A. de Clercq′s Ternate: The Residency and its Sultanate. Smithsonian Institution Libraries. pp. vii.
  4. ^ Allen, Robert B.; Hayami-Allen, Rika (2002), "Orientation in the Spice Islands" (PDF), in Macken, Marlys (ed.), Papers from the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, Tempe: Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies, p. 21, ISBN 1-881044-29-7, OCLC 50506465, archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-12-25