Ternate language

For the local variety of Malay, see Ternate Malay.

Ternate
ترناتي‎
Native to	Indonesia
Region	North Maluku
Native speakers	(42,000 cited 1981)[1] 20,000 L2 speakers (1981)[1]
Language family	West Papuan? North Halmahera Ternate–Tidore Ternate
Writing system	Latin script (Rumi) Historically Arabic script (Jawi)[2][3][4]
Language codes
ISO 639-3	tft
Glottolog	tern1247
ELP	Ternate
Ternate Location in Southeast Asia
Coordinates: 0°1′N 127°44′E

Ternate is a language of northern Maluku, eastern Indonesia. It is spoken by the Ternate people [id], who inhabit the island of Ternate, as well as many other areas of the archipelago. It is the dominant indigenous language of North Maluku, historically important as a regional lingua franca. A North Halmahera language, it is unlike most languages of Indonesia which belong to the Austronesian language family.^[5]

Due to the historical role of the Ternate Sultanate, Ternate influence is present in many languages of eastern Indonesia. Borrowings from Ternate extend beyond the Maluku Islands, reaching the regions of central and northern Sulawesi.^[6] Languages such as Taba and West Makian have borrowed much of their polite lexicons from Ternate,^[7][8] while the languages of northern Sulawesi have incorporated many Ternate vocabulary items related to kingship and administration.^[9] The language has been a source of lexical and grammatical borrowing for North Moluccan Malay, the local variant of Malay, which has given rise to other eastern Indonesian offshoots of Malay, such as Manado Malay.^[10][11]

Ternate has loanwords from Malay, Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Javanese.^[12]

Location and use

It is geographically widespread. It is spoken on the island of Ternate as well as elsewhere in the North Maluku province, with Ternate communities inhabiting the western coast of Halmahera, Hiri, Obi, Kayoa, and the Bacan Islands.^[13][14] Historically, Ternate served as the primary language of the Sultanate of Ternate,^[15] famous for its role in the spice trade. It has established itself as a lingua franca of the North Maluku region.^[16][17]

This language should be distinguished from Ternate Malay (North Moluccan Malay), a local Malay-based creole which it has heavily influenced. Ternate serves as the first language of ethnic Ternateans, mainly in the rural areas, while Ternate Malay is nowadays used as a means of interethnic and trade communication, particularly in the urban part of the island.^[18][19] More recently, there has been a language shift from Ternate towards Malay.^[20][21] It can be assumed that the role of Ternate as a lingua franca has greatly waned.^[13] While the Ternate people are scattered all over eastern Indonesia,^[16] it is not known how many expatriate Ternateans still speak the language.^[13]

In Indonesian, it is generally known as bahasa Ternate; however, the term bahasa Ternate asli is sometimes used to distinguish it from Ternate Malay.^[18]

Written records

The Ternate language has been recorded with the Arabic script since the 15th century, while the Latin alphabet is used in modern writing.^[2][22] Ternate and Tidore are notable for being the only indigenous non-Austronesian languages of the region to have established literary traditions prior to first European contact.^[15][23] Other languages of the North Halmahera region, which were not written down until the arrival of Christian missionaries, have received significant lexical influence from Ternate.^[24]

Classification

Ternate is a member of the North Halmahera language family,^[5] which is classified by some as part of a larger West Papuan family, a proposed linking of the North Halmahera languages with the Papuan languages of the Bird's Head Peninsula.^[25] It is most closely related to the Tidore language, which is native to the southern neighboring island. The distinction between Ternate and Tidore appears more rooted in sociopolitical rather than linguistic differences.^[26][27] While many authors have described these varieties as separate languages,^[27] some classifications identify them as dialects of a single language, collectively termed as either "Ternate" or "Ternate-Tidore".^[28][29][30]

Phonology

Ternate, like other North Halmahera languages, is not a tonal language.^{[citation needed]}

Consonants

Ternate consonant phonemes^[31]

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive/Affricate	voiceless	p	t	tʃ	k
	voiced	b	d	dʒ	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s			h
Approximant	central	w		j
	lateral		l
Flap			ɾ

Vowels

Ternate vowel phonemes^[32]

		Front	Central	Back
High		i		u
Mid		e		o
Low			a

References

1. Ternate at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. Frederik Sigismund Alexander de Clercq (1890). Bijdragen tot de kennis der residentie Ternate (in Dutch). Leiden: E.J. Brill. p. 193.
3. van Fraassen, Ch.F. (1993). "Ternatan/Tidorese". In Levinson, David (ed.). Encyclopedia of World Cultures. Vol. 5. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall & Co. ISBN 0-8168-8840-X. Retrieved 2024-07-10 – via encyclopedia.com.
4. Fathurahman, Oman (2015), Filologi Indonesia Teori dan Metode (in Indonesian), Jakarta: Prenada Media, p. 128, ISBN 978-623-218-153-3, OCLC 1001307264, retrieved 2022-09-07
5. Lewis, M. Paul (2009). "Ternate - A language of Indonesia (Maluku)". Ethnologue: Languages of the World (16th ed.). SIL International.
6. Watuseke, F.S. (1991). "The Ternate Language". In Dutton, Tom (ed.). Papers in Papuan Linguistics No. 1 (PDF). Pacific Linguistics A-73. Translated by Voorhoeve, Clemens L. Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. pp. 223–244. doi:10.15144/PL-A73.223. ISBN 0-85883-393-X. OCLC 24406501. ; see p. 224.
7. Voorhoeve, C.L. (1982). "The West Makian language, North Moluccas, Indonesia: a fieldwork report". In Voorhoeve, C.L. (ed.). The Makian languages and their neighbours (PDF). Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. 1–74. doi:10.15144/PL-D46.1. ISBN 0858832771. OCLC 12421689. ; see p. 47 (1.5).
8. Bowden, John (2005). "Taba". In Adelaar, K. Alexander; Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. (eds.). The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. pp. 769–792. doi:10.4324/9780203821121. ISBN 978-0-203-82112-1. OCLC 53814161. ; see p. 770.
9. Sneddon, J.N. (1989). "The North Sulawesi microgroups: In search of higher level connections" (PDF). In Sneddon, J.N. (ed.). Studies in Sulawesi Linguistics I. Jakarta: Badan Penyelenggara Seri NUSA. pp. 83–107. ; see p. 92.
10. Taylor, Paul Michael (1999). "Introduction" (PDF). F.S.A. de Clercq's Ternate: The Residency and its Sultanate (Smithsonian Institution Libraries digital ed.). Smithsonian Institution Libraries. pp. i–xviii. ; see p. vii (for Ternate grammatical influence on NMM).
11. Allen, Robert B.; Hayami-Allen, Rika (2002). "Orientation in the Spice Islands" (PDF). In Macken, Marlys (ed.). Papers from the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 2000. Tempe: Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies. pp. 21–38. ISBN 1-881044-29-7. OCLC 50506465. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-12-25. ; see p. 21.
12. Hayami-Allen (2001), p. 42.
13. Voorhoeve, C.L. (1988), "The languages of the North Halmaheran stock", Papers in New Guinea linguistics. No. 26, Pacific Linguistics A-76, Canberra: Department of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, pp. 181–209, doi:10.15144/PL-A76.181, ISBN 0-85883-370-0, OCLC 220535054
14. Masinambow, E.K.M. (1972), "Ternatans", in Appell, George N. (ed.), Ethnic Groups of Insular Southeast Asia, vol. 1: Indonesia, Andaman Islands, and Madagascar, New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press, p. 120, ISBN 978-0-87536-403-2, OCLC 650009
15. Warnk, Holger (2010). "The coming of Islam and Moluccan-Malay culture to New Guinea c.1500–1920". Indonesia and the Malay World. 38 (110): 109–134. doi:10.1080/13639811003665454. S2CID 162188648. ; see p. 112, fn. 2.
16. "ТЕРНАТАНЦЫ". Большая российская энциклопедия (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2022-08-14. Retrieved 2022-11-13.
17. Brown, Iem, ed. (2009), "Maluku Islands and Papua (North Maluku)", The Territories of Indonesia, London/New York: Routledge, pp. 175–182, doi:10.4324/9780203403013, ISBN 978-1-135-35541-8, OCLC 881430426 ; see p. 177.
18. Litamahuputty, Betty (2012). "A description of Ternate Malay". Wacana. 14 (2): 333–369. doi:10.17510/wacana.v14i2.66. ; see p. 335.
19. Litamahuputty, Betty (March 10, 2007). "Description of Ternate Malay". Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Jakarta station. Archived from the original on June 10, 2007.
20. Mahdi Ahmad; Sumarlam Sumarlam; Djatmika Djatmika; Sri Marmanto (13 August 2016). "Pemertahanan bahasa Ternate pada masyarakat multilingual". Prasasti: Conference Series (in Indonesian): 466–473. doi:10.20961/pras.v0i0.1574 (inactive 1 November 2024).
21. Maricar, Farida; Duwila, Ety (2017), "Vitalitas bahasa Ternate di Pulau Ternate", Jurnal Etnohistori: Jurnal Ilmiah Kebudayaan Dan Kesejarahan (in Indonesian), 4 (2): 136–151, archived from the original on 2020-09-03
22. Hayami-Allen (2001), p. 7.
23. Taylor, Paul Michael (1988). "From mantra to mataráa: Opacity and transparency in the language of Tobelo magic and medicine (Halmahera Island, Indonesia)". Social Science & Medicine. 27 (5): 425–436. doi:10.1016/0277-9536(88)90365-6. PMID 3067356. ; see p. 430.
24. Dalby, Andrew (2015). Dictionary of Languages: The Definitive Reference to More than 400 Languages. London: A & C Black. p. 620. ISBN 978-1-4081-0214-5. OCLC 842286334.
25. Gil, David (2015). "The Mekong-Mamberamo linguistic area". In Enfield, Nick; Comrie, Bernard (eds.). Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The State of the Art. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 266–355. doi:10.1515/9781501501685-008. ISBN 9781501501685. ; see p. 269.
26. Bowden, John, "Emic and Etic Classifications of Languages in the North Maluku Region" (PDF), Workshop on the Languages of Papua 3, 20–24 January 2014, Manokwari, West Papua, Indonesia, retrieved 2024-07-10
27. Bowden, John (2005). "Language Contact and Metatypic Restructuring in the Directional System of North Maluku Malay" (PDF). Concentric: Studies in Linguistics. 31 (2): 133–158. doi:10.6241/concentric.ling.200512_31(2).0006. ; see p. 139.
28. "Ternate". Peta Bahasa (in Indonesian). Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa. Archived from the original on 2018-06-18.
29. Hayami-Allen (2001), p. 1.
30. Holton, Gary; Klamer, Marian (2018). "The Papuan languages of East Nusantara and the Bird's Head". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. pp. 569–640. doi:10.1515/9783110295252-005. ISBN 9783110295252. ; see p. 577.
31. Hayami-Allen 2001, p. 23.
32. Hayami-Allen 2001, p. 27.

Bibliography

• Hayami-Allen, Rika (2001). A Descriptive Study of the Language of Ternate, the Northern Moluccas, Indonesia (PhD thesis). University of Pittsburgh.