Talk:Orang Pulo language

Betawi?

According to Grijns (1991), the only study of Betawi ("Jakarta Malay”) dialectal variation that covers its entire speaking area to this day, the variety of Seribu Islands can be lexically and morphologically grouped with the Urban Jakarta (Kota) dialect of Betawi, despite some distinctive phonological features, mainly in the realization of final consonants. The thesis cited here also explicitly states that “there are no dialectal or subdialectal differences” (p. 108) in the “Malay language” spoken in the Thousand Islands; but there is another language, namely Bugis, spoken on Pulau Kelapa Dua.

Bugis and "Malay" as spoken in Seribu Islands can still be clearly distinguished; you may compare the wordlists from site no. 10 (Pulau Kelapa Dua) vs. the wordlists from other sites in the thesis cited. The claim that this variety is a Malay-based creole with influences from all over Indonesia as mentioned in the page cannot be verified from the sources cited. In terms of vocabulary, almost all of the “unique” lexicon presented on this page and in the cited thesis (excluding data from the Bugis-speaking site) can be found in generic Betawi Kota speech (cf. Kahler 1966, Chaer 1976/2009, as well as the appendix of Grijns’ study). These words are only "unique" from the perspective of a (non-Betawi) Jakarta Indonesian speaker, but should be pretty familiar to anyone who speak traditional Betawi dialects.

It's still entirely possible that this Seribu Islands variety also has distinctive features in morphology and syntax, but again, this requires more evidence (none of the cited sources address this). For now, it seems more appropriate if this page is either integrated to Betawi language, or renamed to something like “Seribu Islands dialect”. Either way, I think it's pretty clear that the classification must present it as a child of Betawi. — swarabakti^💬 05:21, 26 August 2025 (UTC)