Endangerment, evolution and empowerment in globalising Asian ecologies: Where java and patois take their communities

Abstract

In this paper I discuss issues in endangerment through the lens of Asia, a region that affords complex dynamics in multilingual ecologies that also includes the presence – dominance – of English, a language that entered the ecologies through globalisation of various kinds over various eras. To this end I use as illustration several minority communities whose vernaculars have been or are considered endangered – for example, the Malays of Sri Lanka (SLMs), brought to the island from various parts of the Indonesian archipelago by the Dutch and British colonial powers, whose language, Sri Lanka Malay (SLM), traditionally java to the community, is a mixed language of trilingual base (Malay, Sinhala, Tamil); and the Peranakans, descendants of southern Chinese merchants who settled in Malaya and intermarried with local women, whose vernacular is Baba Malay, a restructured variety of Malay with largely Hokkien (southern Sinitic) influences, usually referred to as patois – and I explore the factors involved in the process and the issues the situations raise, which I consider significant in the endangerment discourse. (i) I discuss how, long before what we consider today’s ‘globalisation’, the English language was already a main player in language shift scenarios. This happened during colonial rule, when a community like the Peranakans, with pro-British tendencies and access to English-medium education, shifted early and swiftly to English. It also occurred later with post-independence language policies, when, with Sinhala being made Sri Lanka’s sole official language and thus also the language of instruction in schools, urban Sri Lankan Malays shifted to English in the home domain to continue to provide the resource to their children, and with Mandarin being designated the official ‘mother tongue’ of ‘Chinese’ Singaporeans, young Peranakans studied Mandarin in school rather than have Malay reinforced. (ii) I highlight how what are considered creoles may be considered doubly endangered, and explore why it was that in community revitalisation efforts the Malays chose to introduce Standard Malay (of Malaysia) (StdMal), which is not mutually intelligible with SLM, rather than their own vernacular. Here issues of global reach, linguistic capital, and identity alignment are discussed. (iii) I also critically evaluate the role of the linguist in the whole enterprise. The arrival of the linguist and their documentation projects sometimes brings about a U-turn in language choices: the Malays later opted to revitalise SLM, deprioritising StdMal. The question is whether this truly served to empower the community. (iv) Finally I venture into the contentious area of whether language loss is necessarily a loss for a community: in the urban Malay and Peranakan communities, a shift to a regionally/ globally more dominant language affords significant opportunities, and there is no sacrifice of ethnic identity. The Peranakans, for example, have experienced significant strengthening of vitality without a need to revitalise their original patois but, conversely, with a wielding of their new vernacular as an asset. In all, I probe the argument that the patterns observed in these communities may be viewed as part of natural evolution in the life and death of languages, and the choices made simply responses in order to survive – even thrive – in the changes in ecologies that communities across the planet experience.