Page:Baba Malay. An Introduction to the Language of the Straits-born Chinese.pdf/3

BABA MALAY. 51 ximity to the busy life of our great trade centres their speech is only very slightly affected, so little do they come in contact with people of other nationalities; hence it comes that the Malay lan- Xuage is spoken with practically the same purity at Telok Blanga, or in any of the other outlying villages of Singapore as it is in the villages of the interior of Malacca or Johor. Those who have dealings with the Malays, and desire to speak their language correctly, as they themselves speak it, must study Malay literature, and especially such modern works as the writings of the famous Munshi Abdullah, or the recently published Riddles written by Guru Sleiman of the Malay College at Malacca, which are in an excellent conversational style.

From what has just been said, it is plain that throughout our British possessions the pure Malay language is the language of the villages. On the other hand the language of the great Settlements and large towns and of the markets and shops everywhere, in fact the business language of the Malay Peninsula, is

BABA MALAY,

that is to say, Malay as it is spoken by the Malay-speaking Chinese. This is quite a distinct dialect, the prevailing characteristic of which is its tendency to follow the Chinese rather than the Malay idiom. It is true that the number of Chinese words which have become assimilated with this dialect is not very large, and that many words have been borrowed from English, Portuguese, Dutch and Tamil, and from other neighbouring tongues, but it is rightly called “ Baba Malay,” for it is largely the creation of the Baba Chinese, and is their mother tongue, so that it belongs to them in a sense that no other people can or do claim it as their own. In this respect it differs greatly from the so-called “ Low Malay ” of Java, for though those Chinese who are born and live in the Dutch Indies all speak that language, yet they have not by any means had the strongest influence in its formation, for “ Low Malay” has a yery much stronger affinity with Javanese and Sundanese than it has with Chinese, and has not been so much affected by the Chinese idiom as the Baba Malay of the Malay Peninsula, the Chinese in the Dutch Indies haying always been few in number as compared with the natives of the country. In the British Settlements, on the other hand, the Chinese have always had a commanding in- fluence in all business affairs, and in a proportionate degree have left their impress upon the language in which the business of the Settlements has always been transacted, and in which it will pro- bably continue to be carried on long after the present generation has passed away. The fact that Baba Malay is now, and is likely to be for an indefinite period, the business language of Singapore, Penang, and the Federated Malay States, would in itself be a sufficient reason why it should be studied as a distinet dialect ; but a still more weighty reason is found in the fact that it is the R. A, Soc., No. 65, 1913.