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Kedah Malay

Kedah Malay or Kedahan (; also known as Pelat Utara or Loghat Utara 'Northern Dialect') or as it is known in Thailand, Syburi Malay ( Phasa Malāyū Saiburī) is a Malayic language mainly spoken in the northwestern Malaysian states of Perlis, Kedah, Penang, and northern Perak and in the southern Thai provinces of Trang and Satun. The usage of Kedah Malay was historically prevalent in southwestern Thailand before being superseded by the Thai language. Enclaves of Kedah Malay can be found in Kawthaung District in Myanmar; Ranong and Krabi in upper southern Thailand; Jaring Halus, Langkat and Aceh in Sumatra, Indonesia and up north in Bangkok, central Thailand, where most of the Kedah Malay speakers are descendants of historical settlers from Kedah.

Kedah Malay can be divided into several dialects, namely Coastal Kedah (; which is the de facto prestige dialect of Kedah Malay), Northern Kedah (), Perlis-Langkawi, Penang and some others outside Malaysia. Speakers in Trang as well as Satun are heavily influenced by the Thai language. However in the district of Baling, they speak a different variant more closely related to Kelantan-Patani Malay than it is to Kedah Malay.

Phonology

Consonants

Note(s):

  • corresponds to Standard Malay prevocalic and intervocalic whereby (many) is pronounced as .
  • In the Tanjung subdialect of the Pulau Pinang dialect of Kedah Malay, is pronounced as or so the aforementioned word would be pronounced as or instead.
  • is an allophone of and corresponds to Standard Malay word-final so Standard Malay (to burn) would be pronounced as in Kedah Malay.
  • is only found in certain loanwords and onomatopoeic words such as (rabbit) and (sound of plate falling).
  • Velar nasal does not occur following and instances of that in Standard Malay correspond to in Kedah Malay so Standard Malay 'cat' and 'yellow' are pronounced and in Kedah Malay (and even spelt accordingly in rare manuscript instances i.e. for the former) though some argue that the final consonant is still underlyingly as can be seen from the derived forms of these words such as 'yellowness' which retains the .
  • Word-final Standard Malay corresponds to in Kedah Malay, so Standard Malay 'thin' is pronounced in Kedah Malay.
  • Word-final after and in Standard Malay corresponds to Kedah Malay so a word like is pronounced in Kedah Malay.
  • In the Northern Kedah and Perlis-Langkawi dialects, the homorganic nasal-oral consonant clusters can have its oral portion removed so (cow), (to wait) and (to bathe) can respectively be pronounced as either or , or and or . In the case that the oral portion is retained, it is weakly pronounced in the Perlis-Langkawi dialect so (cow) would be realized as .

Vowels

Monophthongs

Kedah Malay has eight monophthongs, unlike Standard Malay which has six with and not having phonemic status.

Diphthongs

Kedah Malay has four diphthongs with being the only one that does not exist in Standard Malay.

Change of Standard Malay Vowel Clusters

In Kedah Malay, Standard Malay instances of vowel clusters correspond to usually a diphthong (e.g. Standard Malay (good) ≙ Kedah Malay ) or less commonly, a monophthong (e.g. Standard Malay (normal) ≙ Kedah Malay ) in Kedah Malay. The vowel cluster still occurs though in positions that correspond to Standard Malay word-final (e.g. Standard Malay (sand) ≙ Kedah Malay .

Comparison with Standard Malay

Below is a table showing sound correspondences between Kedah Malay and Standard Malay.

Vocabulary

References

Citations

Bibliography

External links