The language situation in Papua
It has been said that Indonesian is a language with one formal register and a thousand informal registers. This paper describes the informal register used in Papua. This is the middle of three registers, between Standard Indonesian (the formal or “high” language) and Papuan Malay. The lowest register (Papuan Malay) has been the subject of many articles and several important descriptions will soon appear.
While very little has been written about the middle register used in Papua, the situation is analogous to that found in Urban/Jakarta Colloquial Indonesian and Colloquial Riau Indonesian. Those other two colloquial varieties have been very well described.3 Papuan Colloquial Indonesian (PCI) has many similarities and some significant differences with the other two dialects. The first obvious difference is that PCI is influenced by Papuan Malay instead of Betawi or Riau Malay. PCI is interesting because Papua is a melting pot within Indonesia, while being far removed from the influential Jakartan dialect. Fully half of Papua’s population is from other provinces. It is worth noting that PCI is also influenced in pronunciation by accents that come from Papua’s 280 vernacular languages.
The specific dialect of Papuan CI described here is that of Jayapura, which is spoken as an inter-ethnic language by all of the population of Papua except for members of the most remote language groups of the interior. Since most native Papuans have a vernacular as their first language, PCI is usually their second language. Four dialects of Papuan Malay are also spoken, but primarily in more accessible and populated coastal regions. Because of vernacular languages dying out in the same coastal regions, Papuan Malay is likely to be the basilect of people in the coastal regions. In the interior, a local vernacular takes the place of a basilect. Few Papuans control the whole lectal cline, but almost everyone speaks Colloquial Indonesian. The percentages given are my guesses, which I am hoping will be affirmed by others. These numbers are intended only to show the general tendency.
In Papua, as indeed is true for the rest of Indonesia, no one speaks Standard Indonesian as their first native language. It is learned in school. A growing number of Papuans really only control PCI and PM. Many of these are of the younger generation in coastal or near-coastal regions who are loosing their vernaculars, speaking these at only a 1-2 level. (Level 5 being that of a native speaker.) Perhaps only 5-7% of Papuans, primarily members of the most remote interior people groups, are monolingual in their vernaculars. I think there would be zero people monolingual in Papuan Malay. A majority of those who are fluent in PM would also be completely bilingual in PCI. It will be difficult to get accurate counts, since many in Jayapura only speak PM in certain restricted situations and domains, yet still consider themselves to be fluent in it. Few of them really control PM so as to use it in all domains. So generally speaking, PCI is the most commonly controlled inter-ethnic language in the interior of Papua, while PCI-PM bilingualism is the norm in coastal regions.
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