Kristang language

Papia KristangorKristangis acreole languagespoken by theKristang, a community of people of mixed Portuguese and indigenousMalayancestry, chiefly inMalaysia(Malacca),SingaporeandPerth,Australia.
In Malacca, the language is also calledCristão,Portugues di Melaka("Malacca Portuguese"),Linggu Mai("Mother Tongue") or simplyPapia("speak"). In Singapore, it is generally known as Kristang, where it is undergoing sustained revitalisation.
InAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger(2010; formerly theRed Book of Endangered Languages) published byUNESCO, Kristang is classified as a "severely endangered"language, with only about 2,000 speakers. Up to 2014, linguists concerned with Kristang have generally accepted a combined speaker population of about 1,000 individuals or less. The language has about 750 speakers in Malacca.A small number of speakers also live in other Portuguese Eurasian communities inKuala LumpurandPenangin Malaysia, and in other diaspora communities inCanada, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.
ItsendonymPapia Kristangis taken from Portuguesepapear cristão("to chat Christian"). Thepapiaelement of the name iscognatewithPapiamento, another Portuguese-based creole spoken in the Dutch West Indies.
The Kristang language originated after the conquest ofMalacca(Malaysia) in 1511 by thePortuguese Empire. Until a takeover by the Dutch in 1642, Malacca served as one of the key ports in the trade and administration network of Portuguese establishments along withGoaandHormuz, allowing Portugal control over main Asiatic trade routes. The lingua franca of Malacca then was a pidginised form of Malay known asBazaar MalayorMelayu Pasar, used amongst the resident foreign population which then consisted mainly of Javanese, Tamils and Hokkien Chinese. The constant traffic of Portuguese and traders of other origins such as India eventually gave birth to Papia Kristang, one of manyPortuguese-derived contact languageswhich resulted from Portuguese colonial expansion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A pidgin Portuguese preceding the Kristang creole has also been proposed, whereby a reduced system based on Portuguese converges with other languages present in the contact situation.
The community of Kristang speakers descends mainly frominterracial relationshipsbetween Portuguese men and local women, as well as a number of migrants fromPortuguese India, themselves of mixedIndo-Portugueseancestry. This was supported by Portuguese officials who advocated mixed marriages in the face of a labour shortage in the colonies, leading to the very first native speakers of Kristang as well as the development of the creole.
Even after Portugal lost Malacca and almost all contact in 1641, the Kristang community largely preserved its language. The demographics of Malacca in the mid-17th century was still predominantly made up of the Portuguese even under Dutch control. TheIrmang di Greza(Brothers of the Church), a manifestation of the bond between language and religion in the Kristang culture, acted as an intermediary between the priest and the remnants of the Portuguese population despite prohibition by the Dutch. Liturgy and pastoral sessions were conducted in Kristang in Malacca, which contributed to the longevity of the language into a period as late as the 20th century.
Kristang also had a substantial influence onMacanese, the creole language spoken inMacau, due to substantial migration from Malacca after its conquest by theDutch.
The ceding of Malacca by the Dutch to the British via the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 directly caused the decline of the Kristang language. By the mid 19th century, many Kristangs flocked towards clerical and auxiliary positions provided by their new colonial masters. As such, the Kristang language saw a decline in use compared to English. In addition, the rising affluence of the region meant more job opportunities, resulting in many Kristangs moving away from Malacca. Moreover, the language is not taught at school, although there are still some Church services in Kristang.
In the context of Singapore, Kristang arrived in the 1820s due to the large influx of Eurasian immigrants from Malacca.However, there was little exposure and recognition of Kristang in Singapore, especially when English became entrenched as the sole language of education and the major language used in most spheres of society after the country gained independence in 1965. As a result, the intergenerational transmission of Kristang ceased almost completely.
The upkeep of Kristang can largely be attributed to its connection with the dominant religion of the Portuguese and their relative social standing in their communities between the 1600s to the late 1800s. The core Kristang-speaking communities gradually eroded due to better socioeconomic opportunities elsewhere. Post-World War Two, the new generation of Catholic priests that arrived to replace the pre-war priests who had been executed demonstrated little sensitivity towards the Kristang language and culture. Eventually, the bond between Kristang and religion was severed due to the association of the Portuguese Mission with the St Xavier's Church.
Migration overseas and intermarriage with other nationalities have also led to Kristang speakers leaving the Portuguese Settlement in order to live and work in other parts of Malaysia. Furthermore, the dominantly Kristang-speaking middle-class gradually began to speak English for practical reasons, altering the prestige of English with regards to Kristang. To many in the community, they grew to accept that speaking English was a key to employment instead of Kristang, facilitating a breakdown in the transmission of Kristang.
Papia Kristang is facing a steep decline in language use within the community.There has been an apparent language shift toEnglishandBahasa Malaysiadue to the reduced prestige and accessibility of Kristang. However, revitalization efforts have begun in recent years in both the Portuguese Settlement in Singapore and Malacca. Such efforts have seen some success, nearly tripling the number of Kristang speakers of varying fluency.
The Kristang-speaking community located at the Portuguese Settlement, or Padri sa Chang (“The Priest’s Land”) was able to undertake more sustained revitalisation efforts and publicise itself to non-Eurasian Malaysians, and the language. Notably with texts, stories and phrasebooks in Kristang produced byJoan Margaret Marbeckand through investments and interest from individuals and organisations outside the community. Joan Marbeck has produced three publications:Ungu Adanza(An Inheritance),Linggu Mai(Mother Tongue) and the Kristang Phrasebook. She is also credited with writing probably the only play in Kristang, calledSeng Marianne(Without Marianne) and was also instrumental in staging a musical in Kristang -Kazamintu no Praiyawhich translates to 'Wedding on the beach'.
Within the community, there were efforts made together with the help of academics to promote their culture and the Kristang language. In 1988, Alan Baxter publishedA grammar of Kristangbased on his fieldwork within the community.This was the first book which focused on the descriptive grammar of Kristang and established many core concept on Kristang linguistics. It also had a significant impact on many later studies on Kristang.
Support was also received from the Lisbon-based Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which funded and published Marbeck's Kristang text.Along with Malacca Portuguese-Eurasian Association (MPEA) president Michael Gerald Singho, they published a textbook,Beng Prende Portugues Malaká (Papiá Cristang), also known as Come, Let's Learn Portugues Malaká (Papiá Cristang) for people who want to learn Kristang. The association also maintains an active Facebook page aimed at sharing and promoting information related to the Kristang language the Kristang way of life.
The Kristang lexicon borrows heavily from Portuguese, but often with drastic truncation. Due to its largely Portuguese vocabulary, the Kristang lexicon has much in common with other Portuguese-based creoles, including the near-extinct creoles ofIndonesiaandEast Timor. As it is primarily a creole, much of its vocabulary is also derived from Chinese, Indian and Malay languages to varying degrees.
Metathesiswas common in the derivation of the Kristang lexicon from Portuguese root words.
e.g.
Kristang is a polynomic language, wherestandardisationof the language's spoken and written forms is dispreferred and the naturalmorphophonologicalandorthographicvariationthat Kristang developed as a result of its history and sociocultural context is preferred.This variation is usually concentrated around "famililects" spoken by families rather than geographicaldialects, with Kristang famililects generally being categorisable into three distinct forms:
The acoustic and articulatory properties of Kristang have not been extensively studied. However, Hancock (1969,1973), Batalha (1981),and most recently, Baxter (1988)have outlined brief descriptions of its sound system. In general, Kristang's inventory of consonant and vowel phonemes shows a significant parallel to that ofStandard Malay.
Orthographic note:Using a Malay-based orthography, the sounds are represented orthographically by their symbols as above, except:
Portuguese words which begin with⟨ch⟩, pronounced[ʃ]("sh") in modern Portuguese, are often pronounced as[tʃ]("ch") in Kristang, e.g.:
This may be due toMalayinfluence, or the preservation of an Old Portuguese pronunciation[tʃ]in Kristang. It is also worth noting that Northern Portugal also retains the Portuguese[tʃ]pronunciation.
Baxter (1988), in particular, established various phonemic contrasts in the Kristang consonant system.
Stopsandaffricatescontrast in the initial and medial positions.
Fricativescontrast in the medial positions. No clear distinctions between voiced-voiceless pairs and all fricative counterparts can be drawn as/v/is highly infrequent and restricted in distribution and initial/z/has fallen into disuse.
Nasalscontrast do not contrast before a consonant, and no contrasts have been found in identical environments in the final position. In the initial position, only/m/,/n/and/ɲ/contrast, while all nasals/m,n,ɲ,ŋ/contrast in the medial position.Tap, as well aslateral liquidconsonants, contrast in all positions.
The inventory of vowel phonemes in Kristang is also highly similar to Standard Malay vowel phonemes, which can be seen in the table above.
Diphthongs in Kristang are formed when either the vowel/i/, or the vowel/u/, occurs in the same syllable as another vowel. The vowel/i/and/u/are pronounced as the semivowels (or glides)[j]and[w]respectively in such cases.
There are 10 word-internal diphthongs in Kristang as outlined by Baxter (1988). Of all 10, 3 (/ai/as inrainya‘queen’,/ua/as inchua‘rain’ and/ia/as india‘day’) may also constitute hiatus, i.e. the vowels in would be pronounced as two distinct syllables in certain environments.
The relatively large number of diphthongs is also in contrast to Malay, whereby only three native diphthong phonemes are described:
These diphthongs also display visible parallels to certain Kristang vowel sequences[ai],[au]and[oi].
The Portuguese diphthong[oj](or archaic[ou]) are often reduced to[o]in Kristang in Portuguese loan words, e.g.:
Kristang diphthongs are monosyllabic and the vowel sequences are differentiated according to its stress position. For example, the stress in/au/is on the first vowel whereas in/io/, the second vowel is stressed.
Kristang is a syllable-timed language (not unlike Malay which also displays syllable-based rhythm).
According to Baxter (2004), most polysyllabic words in Kristang can be classified into two large groups based on the stress position in the word.
Most words which end in a vowel have tonic stress on the penultimate syllable.
Most words which end in a consonant have tonic stress on the final syllable.
However, stress pattern is not completely predictable in Kristang, as there are also certain words which are exceptions to the above two rules.
Kristang also displays stress shifting in that many verbs display a tendency to shift their stress from the final syllable to penultimate syllable when followed by a stressed syllable in the next word, especially in rapid speech.
The grammatical structure of Kristang is similar to that of theMalay language. The usage of verbs is one of the grammatical features of Kristang that displays this quality. While Portuguese verbs mainly use morphology, or suffixes, to change a verb's tense or for it to match with the person and number of its subject, Malay does not change the form of the verb itself. Instead, it makes use of pre-verbal words to convey tense and does not indicate the person or number of the subject in the form of the verb. Kristang's structure is practically identical to Malay, although the choice of words comes from Portuguese.
Papiá Kristang hasSubject-Verb-Object(SVO) word order in simple sentences. The direct human objects are case-marked by the prepositionku. The same preposition also marks indirect objects. Intransitive clauses, the case-marked indirect object may precede the direct object, especially when the former is pronominal. Noncore arguments are generally located either at the beginning or at the end of the sentence as shown in example (1).
Adversity Passive, which is used to talk about situations where a negative action happens to something, but the person or originator of the negative action is not mentioned something, is also present both in Kristang and Malay. The Adversity Passive is signalled bykena(Malay), and bytokah(Kristang).
For complex sentences, the phrases and clauses are joined by coordinating conjunctionsku"with, and",kě"or", andmas"but". There are also instances where object clauses may be headed byki; however, this is rare and is only found in traditional formal registers, as in a wedding speech. The most frequent means of expressing nominal subordination is parataxis as shown in example (2) and (3).
Adverbial clausesare headed byantis di"before",kiora"when",chuma"as",kantu"if",padi"in order to",kauzu ki"because",kifoi"because", etc., yet may also be indicated by parataxis without conjunctions.
Relative clausesare headed byki"what, who’"(and very rarely bykeng"who"), yet also commonly occur with a pronoun head or may occur without it. This can be seen in example (4) and (5).
In Kristang, Thenoun phrase(NP) is a structure which can occur as subject of a verb,
object of a verb, object of a relator or as a predicate.
There are five types of prenominal determiners in Kristang:
Quantifier:
Numeral:
Interrogative determiner:
Demonstrative article:
The demonstrativesisiandake(li)‘that’ precede the noun and indicate a distance contrast.
Possessive NP +sa:
Adnominal possessivesprecede the noun and consist of possessor (noun or pronoun) + genitive markersa(orsě).
In comparative constructions ofequality, the adjective is marked byiguál‘equal’ and standard is marked byku‘with’:
In the comparative construction ofinequality, the adjective is marked bymás‘more’ and the standard bydi‘of’:
The superlative comparison consists of the comparative of inequality plus a universal standard:
There is only one set of personal pronouns that occurs in all pronominal functions. The 3SG and 3PL pronouns only refer to animates, principally to humans.
Pluralisation is also the same in Malay as in Kristang. For example, in English and Portuguese, an ‘–s’ is added to make cats or gatos, whereas in Kristang and Malay, the entire word is duplicated, such asgatu-gatuin Kristang, andkucing-kucingin Malay. Reduplication is not only a
feature of the noun class but also a feature of the adjective, adverb and verb classes.Adjectives and adverbs reduplicate to signify intensity:kěni~kěninu, “quite small, very small”,belu belu“quite old”,sedu sedu“quite/very early”. On the other hand, the interrogative pronouns reduplicate to signify indefiniteness:keng keng(who who) “whoever”,ki ki(what what “whatever”. As for the reduplication of the numerals,dos“two” andtres“three”, it gave the respective readings “in pairs” and “in threes”.
With nouns, reduplication can signal plurality, often involving partial reduplication:krenkrensa(=krensa+krensa) ‘children’,femfemi(=femi+femi) ‘women’. However, the reduplication of nouns with non-specific reference in object position may yield the meaning ‘all kinds of’ or ‘lots of’:
Without reduplication, the above sentence would simply express plural: ‘birds’.
To indicate verb tenses, the following appositions are used:jah(i.e. from the Portuguesejá, meaning "already", or controversially a corruption of Malaydah, shortened version ofsudah, also "already") for past tenses;ta(fromestá, which means "is") for present continuous tenses andloguorlo(fromlogo, which means "soon") for the future tense. These simplified forms correspond with their equivalents in Malaysudah,sedang, andakan, respectively.
Papiá Kristang has two overt markers of aspect (ja‘perfective’ andta‘imperfective’), an overt marker of future tense (lo(gu)), and a zero marker.
This table summarised the functions of these markers:
Example (15) shows the zero marker (Ø) with a dynamic verb of past or present habitual representation:
Example (16) shows the markerjawith a dynamic verb, with perfective aspect representation:
The markertaoccurs with dynamic verbs in past or present contexts, with either a progressive reading, as in (17), or an iterative reading, as in (18):
The markerlo(go)conveys a future or conditional reading, as in examples (19) and (20), respectively where it occurs with a dynamic verb:
TheTense-Aspect-Mood(TAM) markers do not normally co-occur. Combinations of markers are very rare and when they do occur they appear to involve an adverbial reading of the initial marker. Thus, whenjais seen to combine with the imperfective markerta,jahas the adverbial reading ‘already’ of its Portuguese source:
Much of the lexicon for Kristang numbers draws influence from Portuguese, aRomance language. However, unlike Portuguese, which distinguishes between the masculine and feminine forms of “one” (um/uma) and “two” (dois/duas), numbers in Kristang do not inflect for gender.
A peculiarity of the language is the pronounyo(meaning "I") which is used inNorthern Portuguese(pronounced asyeu), as well as Spanish and Italian/Sicilian.
Portuguese translation:
English translation:
Malay translation: