The Portuguese-based Creoles in Batavia: The Introduction (English Version)

Rafif Aufa Nanda

I decided to write about the Portuguese-based creoles in Batavia. In this post, I

will use two languages, English and Indonesian. It has been a very long time that I
intended to write some posts about the Portuguese-based creoles in Batavia, but, I did
not find any source regarded to these creoles. Now, I have just found a new book at the
university’s library about the Batavia-Portuguese creole and the Tugu-Portuguese
creole, i.e The former Portuguese Creole of Batavia and Tugu (Indonesia) by Philippe
Maurer.
Before I explain all things about them, I would like to explain what ‘a creole’ is,
since the readers of my posts are from various backgrounds of knowledge. “Creole” is
very related to “pidgin”. And then, what is “pidgin”? According to Trudgill, as cited in The
Linguistics Encyclopedia. 2nd ed., (2002:93), stated that:
“A pidgin is a language which has arisen by a process of mixing a simplified form of a
language spoken by people who travelled and colonized extensively (such as English,
French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch), with a simplified form of a language of the
people with whom they interacted repeatedly. Such languages often develop near main
shipping and trading routes.”
Thus, from this definition, we can derive the definition of ‘a creole’. Citing Holm in The
Linguistics Encyclopedia. 2nd ed., (2002:94), pidgins may become a mother tongue for
second and subsequent generation users, which is called as a creole. So, we could say
“creole” and “pidgin” simply as a “mixture ‘broken’ language’.
Why do I use the word “broken” here? If we take a look at some examples of
creoles, let us say Batavian Malay-based creole, we will find out that Batavian is not a
pure Malay anymore. There are many non-Malay elements found in the Batavian
language’s structures, such as the usage of the Javanese prefix ke- for the accidental
passive form instead of the Malay prefix ter- and the usage of the Balinese suffix -in1 for
both locative and causative form of verb instead of Malay -i and -kan. This kind of
situation applies to other Batavian creoles, including the Portuguese-based creole.
There was an “impurification” of the base languages.

1
While in Balinese, the suffix -in is used only for locative transitive, the Malay equivalent of this suffix is -i,
for example jagurin ‘dipukuli’ (being beaten repeatedly) and sakitin ‘disakiti’ (being hurted) (Bawa and
Jendra, 1981:33). Note that the English translation is provided by me, not the authors of the book.

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 There were two varieties of Portuguese-based creoles in Batavia, as stated by
Maurer (2011:6), Batavia Creole 2 and Tugu Creole3. However, it is still unclear whether
Batavia Creole is one of the varieties of Tugu Creole or not, as there were more
Portuguese community members in Tugu. But, Maurer (2011:6) found out some of the
differences between the Batavia and Tugu Creole, i.e:
1. the genitive particle di, frequent in Batavia, is almost absent in Tugu;
2. there is no Malay morphology in Batavia, but some in Tugu (especially the
passive marker di-);
3. whereas the copula is almost always present in Batavia, its absence is very
frequent in Tugu, even with locative predicators;
4. the word for ‘small’ is pikninu in Batavia, whereas it is piklinu in Tugu.
As Maurer (2011:6) separate them into two different varieties, I will also consider
Batavian-Portuguese Creole and Tugunese as the two different varieties.
Some of the readers of my post would not get the point about the concept of the
languages, since they might never learn Portuguese and Malay before. Here, I am
going to try to explain those four points from Portuguese and Malay languages.
1. In Portuguese, we use de between the possesed and the possessor respectively
to denote possessive form, for example: o livro do homem (the man’s book or the
book of the man). Here, do is the contraction between de and the masculine
definite article o. So, the word de is the equivalent of the English word “of”. While
in Malay, denoting possession is just by placing the possessed and the
possessor without any particle, for example: buku orang (the/a man’s/person’s
book).
2. The passive prefix in Malay di- is used to make a verb to passive voice, for
example: dimakan (being eaten).
3. The copula or “to be” in Portuguese is used and has an important role. In
Portuguese, there are two words for “to be”, i.e ser for relatively permanent state
and estar for temporary state. While in Malay, the copula is usually absent,
especially in the colloquial speech, for example: Orang itu di rumah. (That person
is in the house).
4. The word for “small” in Portuguese is pequeno, while pequenino is “very small”
(Davies and Preto-Bay, 2008:279-280). Thus, the second variant is used there.
These creoles are no more spoken, even by the Tugunese 4. The last speaker, as
stated by Baxter in Maurer (2011:5), is reported to have died in 1978. Thus, most of
2
The term “Batavia Creole” is used by Maurer (2011) to refer the Batavian-Portuguese creole. It should
not be confused with Batavian or Batavian-Malay creole. While I prefer to refer the “Batavia Creole” with
the term “Batavian-Portuguese Creole”.

3
I prefer to use “Tugunese-Portuguese Creole” or “Tugunese Creole” or just “Tugunese”.
4
The Tugunese or the Tugu people or Tugunese Batavians are the Portuguese descendants among the
Batavian ethnic group. They are the Christian Batavian population.

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them now speak Batavian or Jakartanese 5. Some of them speak Indonesian as it is the
official language of Indonesia.
Looking back to the history, this creole was a flourishing language during the 17 th
century, but its decline started in the second half of the 18 th century, being replaced by
Malay (Maurer, 2011:5). Schuchardt in Maurer (2011:5) stated that this creole was
totally an extinct language in the end of the 19 th century.
As we know that there are other Portuguese creoles spoken in the Indian
Archipelago, let us say Papiá Kristang in Malacca. But, how different are the Batavian-
Portuguese creoles, Papiá Kristang, and Portuguese itself? The treatment for the sound
/z/ in Portuguese would be pronounced as /ʤ/ in Batavian-Portuguese creoles, for
example, mesa ‘table’ in Portuguese is pronounced as meza in Papiá Kristang, and
medja in Batavian-Portuguese creoles (Maurer, 2011:6). According to Maurer (2011:6),
Tugunese has much more Malay influence than Batavian-Portuguese Creole. Citing a
Tugunese speech in Maurer (2011:6), we can acknowledge the influence of Malay on
Tugunese:
Djenti kampong Tugu papia sua linggu portegis ki dja chempra ku linggu malay […]
‘The people of the village of Tugu speak their Portuguese language which is already
mixed with the Malay language […]’ (127-129)
As the closing for this introduction, I would like to emphasise again that there
were two varieties of Batavian-Portuguese creoles as in Maurer (2011:6). Those two
creoles are not spoken anymore. But, we can learn and revitalise these two creoles.
The structures of the language will be explained in other next lessons.

Bibliography

Abbott, Barbara, et al. The Linguistics Encyclopedia. 2nd ed., Edited by Kirsten
Malmkjær. London and New York, Routledge, 2002.
Bawa, I Wayan and I Wayan Jendra. Struktur Bahasa Bali. Jakarta, Pusat Pembinaan
dan Pengembangan Bahasa, 1981.
Da R. Prista, Alexander. Essential Portuguese Grammar. New York, Dover
Publications, Inc., 1966.
Davies, Mark and Ana Preto-Bay. A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese. New York and
London, Routledge, 2008.
Hutchinson, Amélia P. and Janet Lloyd. Portuguese: An Essential Grammar. 2nd ed.
New York and London, Routledge, 2003.
5
The term “Jakartanese” is the synonymous term for Batavian used in Stevens and Schmidgall-Tellings
(2010:131).

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Maurer, Philippe. The former Portuguese Creole of Batavia and Tugu
(Indonesia).London and Colombo, Battlebridge, 2011.
Stevens, A.M and A. Ed. Schmidgall-Tellings. A Comprehensive Indonesian-English
Dictionary. 2nd ed. Athens, Ohio University Press, 2010.