The Emergence of Creole Minangkabau Language Spoken by the Chinese People in Padang, Indonesia

This study examines the problem of mixing Minangkabau, Indonesian, and Chinese languages in the city of Padang. This process of mixing languages has been going on for a very long time, from the 10th century AD to date. As a result of this mixing, a new variety of Minangkabau language emerged which is known as the Minangkabau Creole. The purpose of this study was to describe the formulation of changes experienced by the three languages involved. The method used in this study is a mixed method, qualitative, descriptive, and distributional methods. In this study the authors described the elements of language in larger units, such as phonemes in words, words in language, words in phrases, and phrases in sentences. Meanwhile, the informants were ethnic Chinese descendants as speakers of the Creole Minangkabau Language who lived in the city of Padang. The results of this study found phoneme changes in the Minangkabau language vocabulary and the Indonesian language vocabulary upon being absorbed by the Minangkabau creole language. These changes appeared to show regularity. Theoretically, this study has added to the literature of Creole language change, while empirically, this study has provided sufficient accounts for the emergence of a new Creole through a contact among Minangkabau, Indonesian, and Chinese languages.