Language of wider communication

Map 1. Emem language area and surrounding languages

2.1.3 Language of wider communication

In Papua’s many coastal areas, “a local, rather than ‘standard,’ variety of Malay is used” as the language of wider communication LWC Donohue n.d.. These Malay varieties are also used in other parts of the Indonesian archipelago “in which there has been extensive pre-Independence contact with the Dutch, who used a variety of Malay as an administrative language, or which have had even earlier contact with Malay-speaking traders” Donohue n.d.. In his sketch on Papuan Malay, Donohue concludes this language “is clearly a descendant of some varieties of eastern Malay” which has been used in Papua since before the advent of Standard Indonesian, and not, “as … [is] assumed by non-native speakers in the province, a simplified, ‘reduced’, ‘pidgin’, or ‘dumbed-down’ version of standard Indonesian….” Instead, it “rather represents the endpoint of a linguistic tradition of its own” and is referred to as Papuan Malay or Melayu Papua. However, according to Donohue, there is not one unified variety of Papuan Malay, but at least four main varieties: Bird’s Head Malay, Serui Malay, South Coast Malay, and North Papuan Malay. North Papuan Malay is used from Sarmi to the Papua New Guinea border, an area that includes the Emem- speaking area, thus North Papuan Malay is used as an LWC by Emem speakers. Donohue further maintains that due to the constant influence of Standard Indonesian, the national language, more and more commonly speakers of Papuan Malay have become bilingual in Standard Indonesian. However, at the same time there seems to be little awareness of the differences between Papuan Malay and Standard Indonesian, so that “their speech travels on a continuum between more and less standard forms.” Thus, Papuan language communities who are in contact with Papuan Malay and who use it as a language of wider communication do not necessarily use a ‘pure’ form of the regional Papuan Malay variety. Likewise, especially in rural areas, Papuan communities do not use the standard form of Indonesian but a more recent simplification of Standard Indonesian with a simplified lexicon that has incorporated a lot of Papuan Malay features. Due to the low awareness of the rural populations regarding the differences between Papuan Malay and Standard Indonesian, this simplified form of Standard Indonesian with incorporated Papuan Malay features is generally referred to as Bahasa Indonesia ‘Indonesian’ Bahasa Umum ‘colloquial language’, or Bahasa Melayu ‘Malay’. For the purposes of this report, the term ‘Indonesian’ will be used to refer to this language of wider communication, even though it is not purely Standard Indonesian. 10

2.2 Population