Keeping Kirinda vital: The endangerment-empowerment dilemma in the documentation of Sri Lanka Malay
The diasporic Malay communities of Sri Lanka were brought to Sri Lanka through various waves of deportation from Indonesia by the Dutch and British colonial powers. Though lacking official identity, the Sri Lanka Malays (SLM) are characterised by a unique mixed language of trilingual base, often...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
University of Amsterdam
2006
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.266813 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/86386 |
| Summary: | The diasporic Malay communities of Sri Lanka were brought to Sri Lanka through
various waves of deportation from Indonesia by the Dutch and British colonial
powers. Though lacking official identity, the Sri Lanka Malays (SLM) are
characterised by a unique mixed language of trilingual base, often referred to as
Sri Lanka Malay creole. In the past, pressure from the country's dominant
languages (Sinhala, Tamil and English), as well as negative stigma associated
with their own 'creole', has led to different degrees of attrition in the SLM
communities. Most recently, a new tendency can be detected: the desire to acquire
standard Malay, the national language of Malaysia. From the point of view of
language preservation, the tendency of shift towards a standard variety can be
seen as yet a higher degree of endangerment for the SLM; at the same time, within
an ethnography of empowerment such a shift could mean acquiring a useful
economic tool while still preserving their identity in assuming a global Malay one.
This paper explores the tension created by these different linguistic ideologies and
offers possible resolutions for the field linguist. |
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