Reaction to the Video of The Baba Nyonya Show - EP 1 'Baba & Bibik vs COVID-19'
By Yee Hang Low
This blog aims to demonstrate Baba
Malay is not a ‘corrupted’ language and how it plays an important role in
current situation. This blog also shows the creolisation of the Baba Malay in
Malaysia and Singapore by looking at its loan words and phonological diversity of
the words as well as the code-switching and syntactic diversity through the
video of a telephone conversation The Baba Nyonya Show – EP 1 ‘Baba & Bibik vs COVID-19’.
Baba Malay is the mother tongue of
the Peranakan Chinese or known as Baba and Nyonya in the British Straits
Settlements, Penang, Malacca and Singapore. According to Tan (1980), he used
the term ‘Baba Malay’ to refer to the Malay dialect that spoken by the Baba
Chinese in present-day Malacca because Baba Malay is not widely spoken in
Malaysia or Singapore. Baba Malay was a business colloquial language which
originally a type of pidgin Malay (Tan 1980:150), also known as Low Malay,
Bazaar Malay or Pasar Melayu (Pasar Malay) (no author 1975:745). However,
Baba Malay becomes a creolised language, as it has its own native speakers; it
also expands in structure and vocabulary to express range of meanings and serve
the range of functions required of a first language of the Peranakan Chinese (Holmes
and Wilson 2017[1992]:94). Hence, Baba Malay is different from the Bazaar Malay
and the standard Malay that widely spoken on the Malay peninsula. However,
because there is small population of Peranakan Chinese who speak Baba Malay,
and therefore it becomes an endangered language in Malaysia as well as in
Singapore. Although there are lots of Peranakan associations to protect
Peranakan culture, some policymakers realised the importance of vernaculars for
communicating important messages in understandable form. For example, the video
of ‘Baba and Bibik vs Covid-19’ (Oon 2020), which will be discussed in
this blog.
Firstly, Oon’s video depicts the multilingual
aspect in Singapore community, as both Baba and Bibik in the conversation spoke
in Baba Malay with plenty of loan words and phonological diversity from Hokkien
(Minnan dialect), Indonesian, standard Malay as well as English. For example,
the term Bibik is derived from Indonesian which used to address elder
women who is in the generation of one’s parents (Tan 1980:157). There are
several Hokkien loan words from the video, for instance, cheng hu ‘government’,
ah soh ‘oldest borther’s wife’, li hai ‘serious’, kamsiah ‘thank
you’ (Oon 2020). Moreover, the most obvious Hokkien loan words in the video are
the terms gua and lu, literally means ‘I’ and ‘you’ in Hokkien. According
to Tan (1980:152) and Shellabear (1913:54), the consistent use of gua
and lu is to reflect their Peranakan identity, to show they are the
separate language group from the mainstream Malay and Chinese. Pick up one
sentence from the video, “Gua chakap sama dia, Ah Soh lu sudah gila kah?” (Oon
2020). The sentence shows that the consistent use of Hokkien terms gua
and lu as well as the Malay words with different spelling, for instance,
chakap in Baba Malay, while cakap in standard Malay, which means ‘talk’;
dengair in Baba Malay and denagar in standard Malay, literally
means ‘listen’. As mispronunciation of original Malay words makes the
phonological diversity between Baba Malay and standard Malay (Tan 1980:162), so
it leads to different spelling. Furthermore, the conversation is about Covid-19,
and therefore the speakers used the slang of Coronavirus to raise the Peranakan
Chinese community’s awareness of the pandemic in a comedy tone. For example,
the Bibik says “Koko Rona Virus”, literally means ‘paternal Aunty Rona Virus’
in Hokkien instead of ‘Coronavirus’ (Oon 2020). This shows that sometimes the
Baba Malay will mispronounce and mix up the words in English and Hokkien
because of the similar slang of the words. However, the mispronunciation of
Coronavirus allows the older generation of Peranakan Chinese to memorise the word.
In addition, the code-switching and syntactic diversity also demonstrate in the conversation video. Code-switching of Malay, English, Mandarin and Chinese dialects in Singapore and Malaysia is very common. Almost every sentence will include loan words from at least three languages. In the video, both Baba and Bibik used lots of code-switching sentences, such as the Bibik says, “Dia lari kat luair, chakap dia chepat chepat mo pi supermarket beli nasik, instant noodles, toilet paper…” (Oon 2020). This sentence reflects the code-switching between standard Malay, Baba Malay and English. Furthermore, there is strong Chinese influence in the Baba Malay syntactic. For example, the word sama is used in various ways in Baba Malay rather than in standard Malay, most likely in Chinese syntactic ways. Sama means dengan ‘with’ or ‘and’; kepada ‘to’ in standard Malay (Tan 1980:164). The term sama that used in Oon’s (2020) video, such as the Bibik says, “Gua chakap sama dia”; and the Baba says, “Toksa chepat chepat beli nasik, instant noodles sama toilet paper”, both sentences are directly translated from Chinese sentences. Sama in the former means ‘to’; and the latter means ‘and’. Additionally, the words gua ‘I’ and lu ‘you’ that mentioned in the previous paragraph are also the obvious Chinese syntactic form in Baba Malay, and the words gua is frequently used in the conversation video. In Baba Malay syntactic, Babas would use gua and lu instead of the standard Malay terms aku and engkau, literally means ‘I’ and ‘you’. However, the used of dia which means the third person ‘you’ in the sentence is derived from standard Malay and never use the Chinese equivalents (Shellabear 1913:54). Chinese loan words in Baba Malay makes people think that Baba Malay is a corrupted Malay dialect, however, the Chinese syntactic structure in Baba Malay is the evidence to prove that Baba Malay is a unique structured language that inherited different language cultures.
In conclusion, the awareness of protecting the minority languages in Malaysia and Singapore has arisen, and therefore most of the cultural and political associations will organise physical activities or create digital platforms to enhance the cultural stuff by linking them to contemporary issues, especially languages, just like Oon’s (2020) telephone conversation video. Besides, the conversation video has successfully showed the Baba Malay is a consistent Malay dialect that has a consistent linguistic structure that influence by various languages, especially Chinese and Malay. Therefore, Baba Malay is not a corrupted language, but it is a respectable dialect that so-called Baba patois which has developed from a particular kind of historical process, it is also an important symbol to define Peranakan Chinese ethnic identity (Tan 1980).
Bibliography
Holmes, Janet and Nick Wilson. 2017 [1992]. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxon and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
No author. 1975. “Bazaar Malay”. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications (14): 745-751.
Onn, Alvin. 2020. “The Baba Nyonya Show - EP 1 ‘Baba & Bibik vs COVID-19’”. Peranakan Sayang, (accessed 25 November 2021), <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQE7p6Tkz_Q>.
Shellabear, W. G. 1913. “Baba Malay. An Introduction to the Language of the Straits-born Chinese”. Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (65): 49-63.
Tan, Chee-Beng. 1980. “Baba Malay Dialect”. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 53(1): 150-166.
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