Eastern Indonesian variants of Malay; creoles/pidgins or dialects?

[atalarikt]

Around the same time European colonialism spread over the world, Malay was a predominant lingua franca for trade that spread throughout the Maritime Southeast Asia, not unlike English, Spanish, French, etc. that spread throughout other continents. Some of the Malay speakers would later assimilate in places where they traded, Eastern Indonesia being no exception, where variants of Malay would later appear, such as Manadonese Malay, Papuan Malay, Kupang Malay, and so on. Nowadays, speakers of these Malay variants can be easily identified as Eastern Indonesians, as they are mostly the same (the difference being the vocabulary in each place).
The question is, how do you see these variants of Malay spoken in parts of Eastern Indonesia? Are they creoles/pidgins or dialects of Malay proper with local influences?

[aaakknu]

I don't know enough about them to have an opinion. But it's an interesting topic, I will wait to read what others think.

[vijayjohn]

I get the impression that Wikipedia considers them creoles, but I've honestly never been sure because to me, they sound more like just varieties of Malay. I think it's possible that their syntax is similar to many (unrelated) creoles in some ways, but I'm not sure whether that's due to any process of creolization or simply because Malay shares the same similarities.

Atalarikt, do you know what kinds of differences exist between these language varieties and (standard) Malay? Is it just vocabulary? Are there differences in terms of pronunciation or syntax, for example?

[OldBoring]

马来语方言 aka 东印尼话

[vijayjohn]

马来语方言 aka 东印尼话

Do people actually call them those things in Chinese?

[OldBoring]

马来语方言 aka 东印尼话

Do people actually call them those things in Chinese?

No, I was trolling. Most Chinese think that only Chinese has dialects, and other languages don't.
But who knows, maybe Malaysian Chinese could.
While Indonesian Chinese are usually assimilated into Indonesian culture, so their native language is usually an Indonesian regional language, speak Indonesian as a second language and may speak some Chinese language, but not always.

[atalarikt]

Sorry for the (very) late reply! Here are some features of Eastern Indonesian Malay variants/creoles:

• schwa [ə] is much less prominent, it either usually turns into [a], [e/ɛ], or assimilates into the following vowel
• [i, u] lower to [e/ɛ,o/ɔ] in some words
• loss of final plosives [p,t,k] and neutralization of final nasals in part of the lexicon
• the perfective marker sudah is shortened to su or so
• the word ada becomes a progressive particle, e.g. Manado Malay Kita pe mama ada pi ka pasar (My mother is going to (the) market)
• demonstrative pronouns ini (this) and itu (that) become determiners and are placed before nouns, like in English, instead of after them (as found in Indonesian)
• causative constructions are formed with kasi/bəri (to give) or bikin/buat (to make), e.g. Papuan Malay sa kasi hantam dia (I hit him/her/it)
• intensifiers are much more prominent, e.g. eh, toh (commonly found in Papuan Malay)
• the word punya (sometimes shortened into pu/pung) is now used as a preposition, not unlike Tok Pisin bilong