Malay words in Baba Hokkien
Teoh Boon Seong and Lim Beng Soon (1999) document the Malay lexical items embedded in Baba Hokkien of Penang, a creolised Hokkien dialect spoken by the Straits Chinese (Peranakan) community of Penang. Their central thesis is that Baba Hokkien of Penang is essentially a Hokkien dialect with superimposed Malay lexical items, fundamentally distinct from the Malay-based Baba Malay of Malacca and Singapore, and that this linguistic profile reflects the unique demographic and historical circumstances of Penang’s Peranakan community (pp. 125–126).
Summary
The article addresses a gap in Peranakan linguistics: while the Malay-based Baba Malay of Malacca and Singapore has attracted considerable scholarly attention (Shellabear 1913; Vaughan 1879; Clammer 1980; Khoo Joo Ee 1996), the Hokkien-based variety spoken in Penang has been largely neglected. The authors argue that Penang’s Baba Hokkien, though syntactically Hokkien, contains a substantial stratum of Malay lexical items whose functions, phonologies, and semantics have diverged significantly from Standard Malay. They adopt and adapt Tan Chee Beng’s (1979) analytical framework for comparing Baba Malay with Standard Malay—loan words (including loan translations), phonological differences, lexical differences, and semantic differences—while excluding syntactic analysis on the grounds that the base grammar is Hokkien rather than Malay (pp. 127–128).
The empirical basis is a two-month observation of naturally occurring speech in a single Peranakan family in Penang (May–June 1998), supplemented by taped conversations of spontaneous speech. The respondents, mostly above the age of 50 and many English-educated, were initially unaware that they used words of Malay origin in their everyday Hokkien (p. 126). The analysis reveals that Malay borrowings are not merely calqued into Hokkien but have undergone systematic phonological remodelling (tone superimposition, syllable truncation, consonant substitution), semantic narrowing or broadening, and functional restriction compared to their source-language counterparts. Above the level of the individual lexicon, the authors identify fossilised formulaic expressions and what they interpret as loan translations—sayings that encode a Malay worldview but are rendered in Hokkien syntax (pp. 131–132).
The article situates these findings within a broader historical argument about language shift among the Penang Peranakan. The authors propose two non-mutually-exclusive scenarios for why Baba Malay was supplanted by Baba Hokkien in Penang: first, Penang lacked a significantly large pre-existing Malay population before British acquisition in 1786, so the Peranakan were less influenced by Malays and more by the influx of Chinese immigrants from the early nineteenth century; second, after the Peranakan heyday, assimilation into mainstream Chinese culture and anglophilic Westernisation progressively absorbed Hokkien and English elements into what had been a Malay-based creole (pp. 132–133).
Key Findings
- The fieldwork (May–June 1998) identified Malay lexical items across seven semantic categories—trinkets, animals, things, cooking/food, body terms, actions, and interjections—totaling well over 200 entries in the appendix (pp. 134–137).
- Phonological remodelling follows systematic rules: high-vowel lowering in final closed syllables, l-deletion with diphthongisation (e.g., bisul → [bisoi], sanggul → [sanggoi]), tone superimposition on disyllabic loans (e.g., kawan → [ka˥wan]), and syllable truncation of polysyllabic Malay words (e.g., barangkali → [bangkali]) (pp. 129–130).
- Semantic narrowing is pervasive: balai means only ‘police station’ (not ‘fire station’ or ‘community hall’), amok functions only as a verb, racun means only ‘a baneful person’ (not a poisonous substance), and haram means only ‘bearing a grudge’ (not ‘forbidden’) (p. 130).
- Semantic broadening also occurs: senduk covers both ‘spoon’ and ‘ladle’ (distinguished only by Hokkien adjectives tua and se), and longkang extends to larger drains for which Malay uses parit (p. 130).
- Clammer’s (1980) statistic is cited to illustrate the language-shift trajectory: in 1870 only 20 per cent of Malacca and Singapore Babas could speak Chinese, but by 1975 the figure was approximately 42 per cent in Malacca and higher in Penang (p. 132).
- Loan translations above the lexical level include sayings such as ‘The Batak is masquerading as a Nonya’ and ‘You sit like the worm when it has struck ash,’ which encode Malay cultural perspectives but are structurally Hokkien (p. 131).
Conclusion
The authors conclude that Baba Hokkien of Penang is the product of a unique demographic and historical trajectory: Penang’s lack of a large indigenous Malay population at the time of British colonisation, combined with sustained Chinese immigration from the early nineteenth century, meant that the Peranakan there never fully shifted to a Malay-based creole as their Malacca and Singapore counterparts did. Instead, Malay lexical items were retained and embedded within a Hokkien matrix, producing a variety that is neither standard Malay nor standard Hokkien but a distinct contact language reflecting the Peranakan’s dual cultural affiliation (pp. 132–133).
Context
- The primary data source is original fieldwork conducted by the authors in a single Penang Peranakan family (May–June 1998); no archival collections are consulted.
- The article’s historiographical contribution lies in being the first systematic documentation of Malay lexical items specifically in the Penang variety of Baba Hokkien, extending the comparative Peranakan linguistics programme established by Shellabear, Tan Chee Beng, and Clammer from the Malacca/Singapore varieties to the under-studied northern Straits Settlements.