Page:Baba Malay. An Introduction to the Language of the Straits-born Chinese.pdf/5

BABA MALAY. 53 The Baba community, however, is still growing by the same pro- cess which must have been going on for centuries, something after the following manner:—An immigrant comes from China, and as soon as he has saved up enough money he opens a small shop ina Malay village, where he soon learns to make himself understood in the Malay language. When he is able to support a wife, he looks out for a girl from some of the poorer Baba families, or perhaps a daughter of ‘one of the numerous concubines to be found in the homes of the wealthy. Baba women of this class are to be found to-day in all the villages of Malacca, married to small shopkeepers, who were born in China, and speak Malay very imperfectly; their children, however, are Babas pure and simple, and in many cases know nothing whatever of the Chinese language. They have learnt the Malay language from their mothers, and from constant association with Malay children in the village where they live; in fact they know much more Malay than they are generally given credit for. Nevertheless there is a marked difference between the Malay spoken by these Chinese children and that spoken by the Malay children with whom they seem to mix so freely; but this is of course easily accounted for by the influence of the Chinese parents upon the language spoken by their children, for however intimately the children of different nationalities may be thrown together in their games, the language of the home must necessarily have the strongest influence upon them. As time went by and the Babas became more numerous, they would begin to form a community by themselves and would not come so much into contact with the Malays; this would be especially the case in the town of Malacca rather than in the villages, in fact it is noticeable even at the present day that the Babas in the villages speak much more like the Malays themselves than those who live in the town. As the Babas in the town ceased to associate with the Malays, their peculiarities of idiom would tend to become fixed, and their speech would be influenced less and less by the Malay standards of pro- nunciation, grammar or the use of words. The Malays have had a literature of their own for hundreds of years, and a considerable proportion of the population have been able to read and write for probably at least 300 years, and their literature has undoubtedly tended to maintain the purity of their spoken language; the Babas on the other hand have never learned to read and write Malay, hence their knowledge of the language has always been purely colloquial, and therefore the more liable to be corrupted.

The differences between the Malay language as spoken by the Babas and the colloquial language of the Malays themselves are principally as follows:—(1) They have introduced a number of words of Chinese origin most of which are wholly unknown to the Malays; (2) They are entirely unacquainted with a large number of Malay words which are in common use among the Malays them- selves; (3) They mispronounce many Malay words, and in some R. A, Soc., No. 65, 1913.