Acehnese ( ; EBAYD: Bahsa/Basa Acèh; Husaini: Bahsa/Basa Atjèh; Jawoe: , : ), also written as Achinese, is an Austronesian language of the Chamic branch natively spoken by the Acehnese people in Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia. This language is also spoken by Acehnese descendants in some parts of Malaysia like in Kedah. Acehnese is used as the co-official language in the province of Aceh, alongside Indonesian.
Being part of the Chamic languages group, Acehnese is the only Austronesian language of the Chamic branch spoken in Indonesia, its closest relatives are the other Chamic languages, which are principally spoken in Vietnam and Cambodia.
As of 1988, Acehnese is the modern English name spelling and the bibliographical standard, and Acehnese people use the spelling Acehnese when writing in English. Achinese is an antiquated spelling of the English language tradition. is the Dutch spelling. The spelling Achehnese originates from a 1906 English translation of the Dutch-language by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, 1892. In Acehnese the language is called . In Indonesian it is called .
Acehnese belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian. Acehnese's closest relatives are the other Chamic languages, which are principally spoken in Vietnam and Cambodia. The distant relative of the Chamic family is the Malayic language family, which includes languages also spoken in Sumatra such as Minangkabau as well as the national language, Indonesian.
Paul Sidwell notes that Acehnese likely has an Austroasiatic substratum.
Linguist Paul Sidwell wrote that "Sometime during this early phase of language shift, perhaps before the beginning of Common Era, the Chamic speakers who were to become the Acehnese left the mainland on a journey that would ultimately end in northern Sumatra." Basing on Graham Thurgood's thesis, Sidwell argues that Acehnese likely had been long separated from Chamic around the first to second century BCE.
Acehnese is primarily spoken in the northern tip of Sumatra, largely concentrated within the northern and western coastal regions. Acehnese is spoken by around 2.8 million people (2010 census) within the province of Aceh, Indonesia, where it is the co-official language of the province alongside with Indonesian, the national language.
Acehnese is also spoken in neighbouring Malaysia, notably in Kampung Acheh, an ethnic enclave within the region of Yan District, Kedah, where 64.4% of Acehnese descendants in the village speaks Acehnese with family.
Acehnese's phonology inventory are as follows:
Acehnese distinguishes between oral and nasal vowels, though not all phonemes have a nasal equivalent.
The table below shows the Acehnese consonants range of their realizations.
Notes:
Acehnese features a split ergative system. Intransitives that align with the agent of a transitive verb (Sa) always show agreement by a proclitic (1). Meanwhile, intransitives that align with the patient of a transitive verb (Sp) may optionally show agreement by an enclitic (2). Volitionality is the determining factor for whether an intransitive verb is Sa or Sp.
All Acehnese pronouns and animate, more often than not human, a demonstative is used to refer to something inanimate. As with Malay, Acehnese only distinguishes between singular and plural, though they do have a system of respect or politeness.
The table below provides the most commonly used pronouns and their respect in the Acehnese language:
Acehnese has three tiers of respect: familiar or colloquial/informal, standard or neutral, and polite or formal.
Acehnese has two forms of "I": (familiar) and (polite), is a shortened variant of , though they're considered the same pronoun, the form is seen more informal. and may also be written as and , though it's seen as non-standard. The word may be added at the end of or to be more polite, translating as "your slave, O lord" in literal.
There are three distinct forms of singular "you": (familiar), (standard), and (polite). is formed through combining and the suffix . can be used for both polite second and third person, though it's widely used to refer to the second person, to distinguish between the two, is commonly added when referring to the third person.
Alongside (polite), there are two other forms of s/he: (familiar) and (standard). The word is formed through combining and , translating literally to "that other person". Another variant of is through consonant assimilation of final -p and ny .
Acehnese pronouns, other than , , and , are ambiguous in quantity, there are various of ways to signify plurality in Acehnese:
Combined with demonstratives such as , the noun and contains a plural sense by its own, and only sometimes acts as singular.
Acehnese is written using the Latin script, though no standard spelling has been officially rasterised or agreed upon yet and has largely gone unstandardised.
The de-facto standard Latin spelling system () is based on the Indonesian spelling system, . Another popular spelling system, Husaini's Spelling () is also used, popular amongst pro-independence members.
EBAYD and Husaini are almost the exact same, with the only difference being how they spell the palatal sounds and , Husaini uses tj, dj, nj, j, and sj where EBAYD would use c, j, ny, y, and sy respectively. The grapheme is a remnant of Dutch spelling of Acehnese, notably to distinguish between oe and oë , and has mostly dropped out of use outside of the Husaini spelling, it's not officially listed as an official Acehnese glyph in EBAYD and is merged with .
Acehnese employs 21 basic latin letters, with 4 additional letters with diacritics: , , , and . The diacritics used are based on the spelling system used by Snouck Hurgronje to write Acehnese, which is based on the French alphabet. Due to its inspiration from Snouck's orthography, the spelling system is also referred to as the Snouck's Spelling System colloquially. Acehnese additionally uses three digraphs: , , and , as well as the apostrophe mark preceeding a vowel to indicate nasality. The grapheme represents at the end of syllables, and the grapheme is used to indicate a breathy or murmured consonant when placed directly after one.
Before Dutch contact, the Acehnese modified the Jawi script to write their language, which itself is derived from the Perso-Arabic script. The adapted writing system called Jawoe is akin to a heterogramic writing system, where words are written in Malay or Arabic but read in its Acehnese equivalent. Since as early as 1888, there has been efforts to create a writing system based on the Latin alphabet for Acehnese, which culminated into the first semi-standardised system developed by Snouck Hurgronje in 1892, which was used by several Acehnese authors and publications until the end of World War II, after the Indonesian war of independence, Acehnese authors largely followed Indonesian spelling reforms and conventions. In 1966, efforts began to instating the Acehnese language into public use and school curriculums, which arises the need for a standardised spelling of Acehnese. This culminated into several seminars between educators and linguists from local universities, which was later perfected into EBAYD in 1980.
Acehnese language is rich with literature. The oldest manuscript written in Acehnese is Hikayat Seumau'un from 1658 CE. Most Acehnese literatures consist of poetic works, very little written in prose form.
Before the Dutch colonial period, almost all Acehnese literature was in the form of poetry, either as hikayat or nazam. Very few works were in prose, one of which was Kitab Bakeu Meunan, a translation of the book Qawaa'id al-Islaam. After the arrival of the Dutch, Acehnese prose works began to emerge in the 1930s, such as Lhee Saboh Nang, written by Aboe Bakar and De Vries. Following that, more prose works appeared, although poetry in the form of hikayat continued to dominate.
The first encyclopedia in Acehnese, the Acehnese Wikipedia, was launched on August 12, 2009. A prose translation of the Quran in Acehnese was published by the Ministry of Religious Affairs on December 13, 2018. As of now, there is no newspaper published in Acehnese. In 2020, the first Acehnese-language magazine, Majalah Neurôk, was launched, initiated by an Acehnese cultural figure, Ayah Panton. Google Translate added the Acehnese language translation feature on June 27, 2024.
Acehnese has a wide arrange of dialect variations, and is divided into four major grouping of dialects:
Aside from the four major grouping, Acehnese dialects can be further subdivided into ten groups: Pasè, Peusangan, and Matang from the North; Pidie; Bueng, Banda Aceh of Greater Aceh; and Daya, Meulabôh, Seunagan, and Tunong of West Coast. The dialect of Daya is also referred to as Lamnoe.
The dialect of Greater Aceh and the dialect of Daya from the West Coast is thought to be the original land where Acehnese is first spoken. It's notable for its stark dialect varieties between villages compared to the largely homogeneous dialects of North Aceh and Pidie. Though the dialects of Greater Aceh and Daya are generally similar to each other.
Standard Acehnese is largely based on the North Aceh dialect, specifically of the Peusangan variety.
Below is a table of the dialectal differences.
The following texts are excerpts from the official translations of article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Acehnese, along with the original declaration in English.