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This is an online dictionary translating day-to-day the language used in Ambon (and to some degree in Maluku more widely) into English. In future the data presented here will be adapted to a print volume, so if you're interested please keep an eye out for that, but in all likelihood this online tool will be far more useful to people.
Only those words that differ from standard Indonesian, either in spelling or meaning, are featured here. Many of the words you'll see here are derived from Indonesian by applying the following substitutions:
Stress tends to be noticeably on the penultimate syllable, which plays a significant part in producing the distinctive Ambon accent.
This dictionary represents the collation, translation, and standardisation of five major sources:
Additionally, an updated version of the Takaria & Pieter dictionary was produced in December 2022 by the Kantor Bahasa Provinsi Maluku (part of the Kementerian Pendidikan, Kebudayaan, Riset, dan Teknologi), so in places where there are new, updated definitions these have been used. Interestingly this document seems to reproduce quite a few of Pattiasina's definitions directly. Finally, the KutiKata series of articles (Maspaitella, 2021), has provided some additional vocabulary along with important cultural context and example sentences.
One question that has no doubt occurred to a number of readers is: why have I called this a creole? The underlying issue here is one that linguists have been struggling with for as long as they've been around; namely, where do you draw the line between a language, a dialect, an accent? When in the evolution of a language can you mark it as being clearly distinct from its parent language, or from other neighbouring languages? The answer being of course that you can't. They all lie on a spectrum and their classifications as one thing or another are tied up inextricably with concepts of culture, nationality, identity, politics, a whole host of other nebulous, subjective concepts.
This idea of a continuous spectrum of variation which we try to cut up into helpful labelled chunks is, I hope, nothing particularly controversial. The controversy comes when you try to get everyone to agree on where the hard limits of these labels sit on that spectrum in a way that can be applied universally. Generally though, the following terms are in common use to refer to things that aren't quite considered separate languages: dialect, creole, pidgin, and patois.
A dialect is generally mutually intelligble with its 'parent' language, and often arises due to geographic separation. Importantly, it is not necessarily a merging and mixing of multiple languages, but a variant of some particular neighbouring/parent language. Creoles, pidgins, and patois, on the other hand, develop in a relatively short span of time from the mixing and simplifying of different parent languages, typically as a result of newly-established trade or colonialism. But whereas a pidgin is generally learned as a second language, a creole is spoken as a first language among the population. Interestingly, a patois is not a formal linguistic term: it can refer to a pidgin or a creole, so you could call this a patois if you were so inclined. But in an effort to not perpetuate poorly-defined terms I've avoided this.
As the language featured in this dictionary is a daily first language for the population, it seems to me that it may be best described as a creole. Certainly the context of a trade language and colonialism applies here: there is clear influence in the vocabulary from Indonesian, Dutch, Portuguese, English, as well as terms undoubtedly from indigenous languages. From Wikipedia,
"The lexicon of a creole language is largely supplied by the parent languages, particularly that of the most dominant group in the social context of the creole's construction. However, there are often clear phonetic and semantic shifts. [...] Often characterized by a tendency to systematize their inherited grammar (e.g., by eliminating irregularities or regularizing the conjugation of otherwise irregular verbs)"
The lexicon here, dominated by Indonesian but with the various colonial languages featured heavily, certainly seems to display such shifts. The Indonesian /ə/ is entirely subsumed by /a/, /u/ by /o/, while the subtle -k and -h final vowel modifiers are lost entirely. As for grammatical regularisation, the Indonesian ter- and te- prefices become ta-; per- and pe- become pa-; ber-, meng-, and me- tend to merge into ba-.
So while I may be a little over-eager in opting for the label of creole, I do think that it meets many of the criteria that could reasonably qualify it as such. Perhaps it shares too much similarity with Indonesian, perhaps it would be better labelled a dialect. But the mixing of multiple source languages, the colonial context, the systematising of the grammar, all of these seem strong creole-ish features to me, and all in all I hope it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to call it one.