Manado Malay is spoken in the city of Manado, throughout the neighboring Minahasan region, and in many other parts of North Sulawesi and Gorontalo provinces. Owing to the use of Manadoese school teachers and civil servants during the Dutch colonial era, influences from Manado Malay can be found even in interior Central Sulawesi.
Manado Malay is classified as a trade Malay. It developed in close association with, or out of, the variety of trade Malay spoken in Ternate (today known as North Moluccan Malay).
The vocabulary of Manado Malay exhibits influence from Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Ternate, and to a lesser extent local languages of the Minahasan area (de Clercq 1869–1870, 1870, 1870–1871, 1871; Watuseke 1956; inter alia). Portuguese and Spanish elements within its word-stock that are not found in standard Indonesian are evidence that Manado Malay must trace back at least to the period of Portuguese and Spanish intervention in Indonesia during the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries. Vocabulary of Ternatean provenance testifies to the former importance of the Ternate kingdom in the spice trade and the influence their rulers once wielded in the region, incluing nearby parts of Sulawesi. Even when circa 1680 Ternate was forced to cede its claims over northern Sulawesi to the Dutch, the latter continued for nearly a century and a half to administrate northern Sulawesi from their residency in Ternate.
Literary Tradition and Growth
During the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries, a written form of the language was used in contracts and other correspondence between the Dutch authorities and rulers in northern Sulawesi. Similarly, in the nineteenth century Protestant missionaries developed and used written Manado Malay materials in their missionization and educational efforts among the Minahasan peoples (Watuseke and Watuseke-Politton 1981:325).
By the end of the nineteenth century, however, proper ‘Sumatran’ Malay had taken over these and other functions, and Manado Malay lapsed into being an oral language only. Nonetheless, the number of speakers continued to grow over the next one hundred years, and following the end of the Suharto era in 1998 and the subsequent move toward decentralization and regional autonomy, Manado Malay emerged as the regional language of northern Sulawesi. Among various domains, Manado Malay is now heard in radio programming and political campaigns, while the written language is popularly used in newsprint, billboards and other forms of advertising.
Owing in part to its recent rise, it has been difficult to estimate the total number of speakers, let alone how many speak it as their first versus a second language. The 16th edition of the Ethnologue (Lewis 2009:446) reported 850,000 speakers—presumably these are people who speak Manado Malay as their first language—but how they obtained this estimate is unknown to us. Merrifield (1991:72) estimated 1,075,000 speakers, but this figure is nothing other than the 1990 total population of the then Minahasa Regency. Citing an unnamed source, Whisler (2006) suggests that across North Sulawesi, Gorontalo and Central Sulawesi, more than three million people speak Manado Malay as either their first language or as a second or third language.
Clercq, F. S. A. de. 1869–1870. Sporen van het verblijf der Spaanjaarden in de Minahassa. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië 3/3 (pt II):415–417; 3/4 (pt I):491–492.
Clercq, F. S. A. de. 1870. De voornaamste Hollandsche woorden in het Maleisch der Minahasa. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië 3/4 (pt I):177–190, (pt II):97–99.
Clercq, F. S. A. de. 1870–1871. Lijst van eenige woorden van vreemden oorsprong voorkomende in het Maleisch der Minahasa. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië 3/4 (pt I):364–378, (pt II):99–101; 3/5 (pt II):424–425.
Clercq, F. S. A. de. 1871. Eene bijdrage tot de kennis van het Maleisch der Minahasa. Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië 3/5 (pt II):403–423.
Lewis, M. Paul (ed.) 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the world, 16th edition. Dallas: SIL International.
Merrifield, Judi. [1991.] Life in North Sulawesi. Unpublished typescript, vii, 107 pp.
Watuseke, F. S. 1956. Kata-kata Ternate dalam bahasa Melaju-Manado dan bahasa-bahasa Minahasa. Pembina Bahasa Indonesia 9:107–110.
Watuseke, F. S.; and W. B. Watuseke-Politton. 1981. Het Minahasa- of Manado-Maleis. Bijdragen tot de Taal‑, Land‑ en Volkenkunde 137:324–346.
Whisler, Ronald. 2006. The historical development of Manado Malay. Published in Universitas Kristen Indonesia Tomohon Journal, Tomohon, North Sulawesi, Indonesia.