Pontianak Teochew

Pontianak Teochew (Chinese: 坤甸潮州話; Peng'im: kung¹ diêng⁶ dio⁵ ziu¹ uê; Pe̍h-ūe-jī: Khun-tiān Tiô-tsiu-uē; Indonesian: Bahasa Tiociu Pontianak) is a dialect of Teochew primarily spoken by the Chinese community in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Pontianak Teochew was originally spoken by the Teochew people who migrated from the Chaoshan region in Guangdong, China. These migrants and their descendants constitute the majority of the Chinese population in Pontianak and its surrounding areas. Today, however, it serves as the lingua franca for the entire Chinese community in Pontianak. Pontianak Teochew has also become a common trade and marketplace language in Pontianak and its surrounding areas, even among non-Teochew Chinese communities, such as the Hakkas. The Teochew people primarily dominate the city center and the southern suburbs in Kubu Raya, while the Hakkas are more concentrated in the northern suburbs across the Kapuas River and neighboring areas, such as Mempawah Regency.
Unlike in Java, where the use of Chinese languages has declined due to language shift and past discouragement by the Indonesian government, the Chinese dialects spoken in Pontianak and West Kalimantan remain well-preserved. Pontianak Teochew continues to be spoken across generations of the Chinese community in Pontianak, including by younger people. It is used in schools and markets, although there is a gradual shift toward Indonesian, particularly among the youth. Code-mixing between Pontianak Teochew and Indonesian is also a common phenomenon. Pontianak Teochew has undergone significant assimilation into the local languages, making it significantly different from the original Teochew dialect spoken in Guangdong. This variation is primarily the result of language assimilation processes involving Pontianak Malay, the native language of the area, and Indonesian, the national language. Additionally, Pontianak Teochew has been influenced by other Chinese varieties, such as Hakka. Many Chinese people in Pontianak are generally multilingual, speaking not only Teochew but also Hakka, Mandarin, Pontianak Malay, and Indonesian.
The Teochew people began migrating to what is now West Kalimantan during the 19th century. Originating from the Chaoshan region in southern Guangdong, they were part of a larger migration wave and typically passed through the port of Shantou on their journey. Initially, not all Chinese migrants to West Kalimantan were part of the middle class. Many traveled in groups, and it was common for some to work as farmers or small traders, placing them in the lower class. In contrast to Java and Sumatra, where Cantonese and Hokkien make up the majority of the Chinese population, these two groups form only a small minority in West Kalimantan. The majority in this region are Hakka, who settled in West Kalimantan much earlier, followed by the Teochew. These Chinese migrants began arriving when the Pontianak Sultanate invited them to engage in mining activities and help revitalize trade. The Teochew people have generally steered clear of politics, focusing primarily on trade. As a result, they were largely excluded from the establishment of the Lanfang Republic in the 19th century, which was almost entirely composed of Hakka.
The use of Teochew and other Chinese dialects was significantly discouraged following Indonesia's independence. In the 1950s, several policies were introduced across the archipelago targeting Chinese language and culture. In the summer of 1957, military commanders, intent on eliminating foreign ideologies, closed all Chinese-language schools. Then, in April 1958, a military decree was issued prohibiting the publication of newspapers and periodicals in Chinese. With the onset of the New Order, the government under Suharto introduced the official national policy regarding Chinese religion, beliefs, and traditions through Presidential Instruction No. 14/1967 (Inpress No. 14/1967). This policy mandated that all Chinese rituals and activities be confined to the family and not take place publicly. For more than thirty years, Teochew, along with other Chinese dialects, was explicitly discouraged in Indonesian-medium schools. Teachers encouraged the use of Indonesian and discouraged students from speaking their native languages.
Following the fall of the New Order, President Abdurrahman Wahid initiated significant reforms for the Chinese community by repealing the 1967 national policy through Presidential Decision No. 6/2000 (Keppres No. 6/2000). This was further supported by President Megawati Soekarnoputri, who issued Presidential Decision No. 19/2002 (Keppres No. 19/2002), declaring Chinese New Year a national holiday. These changes marked a shift toward greater acceptance and expression of Chinese culture and language. With Mandarin reintroduced in schools, Teochew is no longer as strictly prohibited as it once was.
The Chinese community forms the dominant ethnic group in Pontianak, making up an estimated 30% to 40% of the city's population. Of this population, more than half or two-thirds are Teochew, while the remaining portion consists of Hakkas or other Chinese groups.
In Pontianak, two varieties of Chinese are spoken: Teochew and Hakka. The Teochew dialect is the most widely spoken among the Chinese community in Pontianak. The Teochew population primarily resides in the urban areas of southern Pontianak and Kubu Raya Regency, whereas those in northern Pontianak, as well as the suburbs and rural areas, predominantly speak Hakka. However, many Hakka speakers in Pontianak are bilingual, fluent in both Hakka and Teochew—and the same is true vice versa. The Teochew are primarily urban dwellers, including plantation workers, shopkeepers, and traders, while the Hakka were traditionally rural inhabitants, working as miners, farmers, and small traders. However, following the forced migration of the 1960s, predominantly involving Hakka, this pattern was disrupted. The Teochew, being relatively better off and long-established residents of the city, saw their language gradually become the common spoken language for both Teochew and Hakka communities.
Teochew has become the lingua franca of the Chinese community in Pontianak, serving not only the Teochew population but also the Hakka and other Chinese ethnic groups. Code-mixing and code-switching between Teochew, Hakka, Pontianak Malay, and Indonesian are prevalent in daily interactions. Teochew is so deeply embedded in Pontianak that many non-Chinese individuals, especially business owners, can speak it to some extent. Teochew speakers in the region take great pride in their dialect, with younger generations often making a conscious effort to avoid code-mixing with Malay or Indonesian. In addition to learning Teochew as their mother tongue or first language, many Chinese youths in Pontianak also study Mandarin, which serves as the unifying language for ethnic Chinese communities. Proficiency in Mandarin is especially common among older generations and younger speakers who are actively working to reconnect with their cultural roots. Indonesian, the national language, is used in formal contexts such as schools, government institutions, and interethnic communication. Additionally, many Chinese people in Pontianak are fluent in Pontianak Malay, the local Malay dialect. While the majority of Pontianak Malay speakers are ethnically Malay, many non-Malay residents, including Chinese, also speak the local language. The use of Teochew is under threat due to a shift in language preferences. Currently, in daily life, many Chinese people in Pontianak prefers and uses Indonesian or Pontianak Malay. This indicates that the language used by the Chinese community in Pontianak has undergone a shift, especially among the younger generation.
In Pontianak Teochew, there are 18 distinct initials. They are: [p], [pʰ], [b], [m], [t], [tʰ], [n], [l], [z], [ts], [tsʰ], [s], [k], [kʰ], [g], [ŋ], [h], and [∅].
Notes:
There are a total of seven finals in Pontianak Teochew, consisting of three nasal finals and four plosive finals. In addition, Pontianak Teochew also includes two syllabic consonants, similar to those found in Taiwanese Hokkien.
Pontianak Teochew has 11 Vowels in total, comprising 6 simple vowels and 5 nasalized vowels. It also features 20 diphthongs and 4 triphthongs. In total, there are about 87 rimes.
The tonal system of Pontianak Teochew remains largely identical to the original Teochew spoken in Guangdong, particularly the Jieyang dialect. Pontianak Teochew has a tonal system with eight distinct tones, which are further classified into yin (陰, "dark") and yang (陽, "light") tones. These tones are classified into four categories: level tones, rising tones, falling tones, and entering tones. Each category includes both voiced and devoiced variations, resulting in a total of eight distinct tones. Due to the influence of Indonesian and Malay, both non-tonal languages, many Teochew speakers in Pontianak have gradually lost the distinction between high and low tones, a defining feature of Teochew as spoken in Guangdong. As a result, some speakers no longer use tones in their speech.
The tone sandhi of Pontianak Teochew generally follows the patterns found in other Teochew dialects. The rules are summarized below:
The word order of existential sentences in Pontianak Teochew mirrors that of Mandarin and other Chinese varieties. Similarly, sentences with verbal predicates in Pontianak Teochew also generally follow the subject-verb-object word order (SVO) pattern, consistent with other Chinese languages.
Similar to Mandarin and other Chinese varieties, Pontianak Teochew incorporates perfective aspects. In Pontianak Teochew, the perfective marker signifies that an event is completed, represents the event as lacking internal structure, or conveys the event without highlighting its continuing relevance to the present. An example of the use of a perfective aspect marker is as follows:
With a perfective marker, such as lou (囉) the sentence conveys the meaning "Anna went to the market." The perfective marker lou in this context highlights the temporal property of the event, specifically that it is completed.
The perfective aspect stands in contrast to both the imperfective and prospective aspects. The imperfective aspect represents an event as having internal structure, such as being ongoing or habitual, while the prospective aspect describes actions or events that are about to occur. Similar to the perfective aspect, the imperfective aspect can also be indicated using various markers, time-related adverbs, and auxiliaries.
Another examples of perfective markers in Pontianak Teochew are diau (掉) and dioh (著). Diau conveys meanings opposite to those associated with lou. While lou marks completed events, diau expresses that the event is unexpected, unplanned, or negative. However, it can also describe events that are neutral, meaning the interpretation can shift depending on the context, potentially conveying either a positive or negative connotation. Similar to diau, dioh also indicates an unexpected and unplanned event. However, unlike diau, which generally conveys a negative tone from the speaker's perspective, dioh does not inherently carry a positive or negative value. The interpretation of whether the event is viewed as positive or negative depends on the context and the speaker's perspective. Examples of the usage of diau and dioh are as follows:
Each of these three markers conveys a specific meaning from the speaker's perspective and is used with different types of verbs, such as transitive or intransitive. The marker lou indicates that the speaker expected the event to occur and views it positively. It can co-occur with both transitive and intransitive predicates. In contrast, the markers diau and dioh both express the speaker's perception that the event was "unexpected." However, diau generally conveys that the event is negative from the speaker's perspective, while dioh is more neutral, with the meaning depending on the context to indicate whether the event is perceived as positive or negative. Moreover, diau and dioh exhibit complementary distribution in terms of syntactic properties: diau is used with intransitive unaccusative verbs, while dioh is used with transitive and dynamic predicates.
The negations or negative markers in Pontianak Teochew can generally be categorized into two types: those beginning with 'b', such as bo (無), boi (𣍐), and bue (未), and those beginning with 'm', such as m (唔), mo (莫), and min (免). While some of these markers can be synchronically decomposed into two morphemes, others cannot.
The negative marker bo originates from the morphemes b ‘not’, a bound negative marker that cannot stand alone, and u (有) ‘exist, have’. Based on its meaning, bo is closer to méiyǒu (沒有), meaning ‘not exist, not have’ in Mandarin. Similar to the morpheme yǒu in Mandarin, the morpheme u in Pontianak Teochew can express ‘possession’ or ‘having.’ Below is an example comparing the use of u and bo respectively:
The examples above demonstrate that the negive marker bo can negate an event that has an affirmative form of u (‘exist’).
This negative marker boi expresses inability and negates epistemic modality. The declarative form using oi ‘able’ indicates ability, while its negative counterpart, boi, means ‘unable’. For example:
Another modal auxiliary expressing ability is hiau (曉). The usage in affirmative sentences is generally the same as oi, with oi being replaced by hiau, and the negative form is boi hiau (𣍐曉). However, there is a slight difference between the affirmative sentences using oi and those using hiau. Hiau indicates a higher level of skill than oi when referring to ability.
The negation bue means ‘not yet,’ similar to hái méi (還沒) in Mandarin. It grammatically negates transitive, intransitive unaccusative, or intransitive unergative predicates. For example:
This negative marker m ‘not’ negates certain verbal or adjectival predicates, particularly stative verbs—those that describe a state or condition that is static and unchanging, such as know or believe. The negative marker m also negates the copula si (是), which appears optionally in the affirmative form. The key difference between sentences using si and those without it is that the former adds emphasis to the predicate. It can also negate the modal hiau ‘can’ to form m hiau (唔曉) ‘cannot'. Example of its usage are shown below:
The negative marker mo expresses the preference that something had better not happen. Mo is also used in negative imperatives. Similar to English imperatives, the implied subject ‘you’ is not pronounced. For example:
The negation min means ‘no need’ and expresses a lack of necessity or requirement. Min can occur with a transitive, intransitive unergative, or intransitive unaccusative predicate. For example:
Verbs in Pontianak Teochew are categorized into three types: intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive.
In Pontianak Teochew, the basic word order of a intransitive sentence follows a subject-verb structure. Reversing this order to verb-subject results in ungrammaticality. Furthermore, the subject is not marked, meaning subjects of Unergative verbs are identcal in form to those of Unaccusative verbs. These features are illustrated in the following sentences:
Tthe basic word order of a transitive sentence is subject-verb-object (SVO). Alternative word orders, such as object-verb-subject (OVS), verb-object-subject (VOS), object-subject-verb (OSV), and verb-subject-object (VSO), are ungrammatical. Neither the subject nor the object is marked, and their thematic roles are determined solely by theirposition in the sentence. For example:
Ditransitive sentences in Pontianak Teochew have two basic structures. In one form, the indirect object and direct object appear adjacent to each other without additional marking. In the other form, the indirect object is introduced by the preposition kheh (乞) 'give' or 'to'. This structure is similar to the prepositional dative in English, where the indirect object is marked by a preposition (e.g., "John sent a letter to Mary"). In the double-object construction, the indirect object (IO) must precede the direct object (DO). Reversing the order of these arguments results in an ungrammatical sentence. Verbs like kheh and pung (分) ‘give’ permit both the double-object and prepositional dative constructions. In contrast, verbs like boi (賣) ‘sell’ allow only the prepositional dative order, while verbs like ka (教) ‘teach’ exclusively allow the double-object order. These features are illustrated in the following sentences:
Many characteristics of other Teochew dialects are still preserved in Pontianak Teochew. However, it has also adopted new features, particularly in vocabulary, while simultaneously retaining certain phonological traits that have become obsolete in the Teochew dialects spoken in China.
The phonological aspects between Pontianak Teochew and other Teochew dialects are mostly identical. They all have 19 consonants and Below are some phonological distinctions of Pontianak Teochew in comparison to other Teochew dialects:
The tonal system of Pontianak Hakka remains largely identical to that of Teochew dialects spoken in mainland China, particularly the Jieyang dialect. Like most Min Nan varieties, it features eight distinct tones. However, due to the influence of Indonesian and Malay, many Pontianak Teochew speakers either no longer use tones fully or do not emphasize them as strongly. Below is a comparison of the tonal systems of Teochew as spoken in Pontianak, Jieyang, Shantou, and Chaozhou:
The vocabulary of Pontianak Teochew largely retains the core characteristics of Teochew. For instance, in terms of meaning, 手 [tsʰiu⁵³] refers to both the hand and arm, while 眉 [tsʰu²¹³] means "house." Structurally, the order of morphemes and the use of affixes remain largely consistent with Teochew, as seen in reversed compounds like 猪母 (sow), 牛公 (bull), and 人客 (guest), as well as affixed words such as 囝 [kia⁵³], which forms derivatives like 路囝 (road), 刀囝 (knife), and 姐妹囝 (sisters). However, in terms of lexical origins, Pontianak Teochew exhibits notable differences from the Teochew dialects spoken in Guangdong. The vocabulary of Pontianak Teochew originates from multiple sources, including core Teochew words, terms unique to the Swatou and Jieyang dialects, loanwords from Indonesian and Malay, influences from other non-Indonesian languages and dialects, and a considerable number of newly coined words specific to Pontianak Teochew.
Pontianak Teochew shares a significant portion of its vocabulary with the dialects of Jieyang, Chaozhou, and Shantou. While many words align closely with Jieyang dialect, a smaller number reflect distinct Chaozhou influences. Some words show similarities with both Jieyang and Swatou dialects, while others exhibit noticeable morphological and syntactic differences. Additionally, Pontianak Teochew has incorporated a considerable number of loanwords from Indonesian, Malay and English, as well as hybrid formations unique to the local linguistic environment. Additionally, Pontianak Teochew has been influenced not only by local languages but also by other Chinese dialects, particularly Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin. Some words resembling Mandarin likely originated from Mandarin education, where original terms were adopted but adapted to Teochew pronunciation. In other cases, words were directly borrowed by imitating Mandarin pronunciation.
The vocabulary of Pontianak Teochew is primarily influenced by the Jieyang dialect. However, due to its distance from the main Teochew-speaking regions, where the linguistic base has been established for centuries, Pontianak Teochew has developed unique characteristics. The interaction between migrants from Jieyang and Shantou, as well as contact with people from different backgrounds, has contributed to this distinction.
Like other Chinese varieties in Indonesia, the Teochew spoken in Pontianak has incorporated vocabulary influenced by the local Malay dialect and Indonesian, distinguishing it from the variety spoken in China. This influence is evident in the presence of Malay and Indonesian loanwords within Pontianak Teochew. However, compared to other Teochew dialects in Indonesia—such as the variety spoken in Jambi, which has undergone significant influence and adopted numerous loanwords from Hokkien and the local Malay dialect—Pontianak Teochew remains more conservative. It has preserved much of its original vocabulary, reflecting a stronger connection to its linguistic roots. However, Pontianak Teochew has also developed unique vocabulary that is not found in other Teochew dialects.
Due to interactions with other groups, Pontianak Teochew has incorporated vocabulary not found in Guangdong Teochew dialects. While these words constitute only a small portion of the lexicon, they remain significant. Examples include 唐山 'China' or 'ancestral homeland'; 番囝 'indigenous people'; 痴宫 'psychiatric hospital'; 房宫 'bedroom'; 丛浴 'bathing; 食風屐 'stubbornness'; 霜厨 'refrigerator'; 公司 'public expenses'; 做字 'handle official matters'; and 棒柔 'bribery'. Furthermore, some words that have faded from use in Guangdong Teochew dialects are still preserved in Pontianak Teochew. For instance, 我儂 /ua⁵³.naŋ/ is used for "we/us," and 汝儂 /lɯ⁵³.naŋ⁵³/ for "you (plural)," whereas in Guangdong Teochew dialects, these original terms have disappeared, replaced by 阮 /uaŋ⁵³/ and 恁 /niŋ⁵³/ respectively. Below is a list of distinct words coined in Pontianak Teochew, along with comparisons to Jieyang, Chaozhou and Swatou dialects:
Teochew has been influenced by other Chinese varieties, including Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin. Hokkien is one of the most widely spoken Chinese varieties in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, while Hakka is the dominant Chinese variety in West Kalimantan, and Mandarin served as the lingua franca among the Chinese community. As a result, these languages have significantly shaped Pontianak Teochew. Below are some Pontianak Teochew words borrowed from Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin, alongside their corresponding Teochew terms from Guangdong for comparison:
Pontianak Teochew has been influenced by loanwords from Indonesian and Malay, primarily in domains closely related to daily life. Most of these borrowed words represent concrete concepts, such as geography, minerals, natural phenomena, agriculture, plants, food, fruits, animals, housing, furniture, tools, everyday objects, cuisine, demographics, and education. Below are some Pontianak Teochew words borrowed from Indonesian and Malay:
Below are some examples of commonly used Pontianak Teochew words: