Madurese language

Madurese in Javanese script

Madurese is a language of the Madurese people of Madura Island and eastern Java, Indonesia; it is also spoken on the neighbouring small Kangean Islands and Sapudi Islands, as well as from migrants to other parts of Indonesia, namely the eastern salient of Java (comprising Pasuruan, Surabaya, Malang to Banyuwangi), the Masalembu Islands, and even some on Kalimantan. The Kangean dialect may be a separate language. It was traditionally written in the Javanese script, but the Latin script and the Pegon script (based on Arabic script) is now more commonly used. The number of speakers, though shrinking, is estimated to be 8–13 million, making it one of the most widely spoken language in the country. A variant of Madurese that is Bawean is also spoken by Baweanese (or Boyan) descendants in Malaysia and Singapore.

Madurese is a Malayo-Sumbawan language of the Malayo-Polynesian language family, a branch of the larger Austronesian language family. Thus, despite apparent geographic spread, Madurese is more related to Balinese, Malay, Sasak, and Sundanese, than it is to Javanese, the language right next door.

Links between Bali–Sasak languages and Madurese are more evident with the "low" form (common form). There are some common words between Madurese and Filipino languages as well as between Madurese and Banjar (a Malayic language).

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m ꦩ	n̪ ꦤ	ɳ ꦟ	ɲ ꦚ	ŋ ꦔ
Plosive	voiceless	p ꦥ	t̪ ꦠ	ʈ ꦛ	c ꦕ	k ꦏ	ʔ
	voiced	b ꦧ	d̪ ꦢ	ɖ ꦣ	ɟ ꦗ	ɡ ꦒ
	aspirated	pʰ ꦧ	t̪ʰ ꦢ	ʈʰ ꦣ	cʰ ꦗ	kʰ ꦒ
Fricative				ʂ ꦱ			h ꦲ
Trill				r ꦫ
Approximant	central				j ꦪ	w ꦮ
	lateral			l ꦭ

Madurese has more consonants than its neighboring languages due to it having voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, and voiced sounds. Similar to Javanese, it has a contrast between dental and alveolar (even retroflex) stops .^[3]

Morphology

Madurese nouns are not inflected for gender and are pluralized via reduplication. Its basic word order is subject–verb–object. Negation is expressed by putting a negative particle before the verb, adjective or noun phrase. As with other similar languages, there are different negative particles for different kinds of negation.

Common words

Numerals

Sample text

From the Article 1 of the Declaration of Human Rights.

Sadajana oreng lahir mardika e sarenge drajat klaban hak-hak se dha-padha. Sadajana eparenge akal sareng nurani ban kodu areng-sareng akanca kadi taretan.

All Human Beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, they are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

References

Bibliography

• Davies, William D. 2010. A grammar of Madurese. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Madurese language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator