Cocos Islands Malay

Cocos Malay is a post-creolized variety of Malay, spoken by the Cocos Malays who predominantly inhabit the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island region which is a part/territory of Australia. Apart from Australia, this language is also spoken by the diaspora of Cocos Malay descendants in Sabah, Malaysia.

Linguistically, Cocos Malay derives from the Malay trade languages of the 19th century, specifically the Betawi language, with influences from Javanese and Sundanese. Malay is offered as a second language in schools, and Malaysian has prestige status; both are influencing the language, bringing it more in line with standard Malay.

There is also a growing influence of English, considering the Islands having been an Australian territory and globalization drifting modern terms into the daily parlance. In 2009, Cocos Malay students were prohibited from using their own language and failure to comply resulted in punishment in the form of "speaking tickets" which meant that they were required to carry out cleaning duties in school. However, this form of language restriction ended by 2011.

From Wikipedia · Cocos Malay · CC BY-SA 4.0