Madurese language


Madurese is a language of the Madurese people of Madura Island and Eastern Java, Indonesia; it is also spoken on the neighbouring small Kangean Islands and Sapudi Islands, as well as by migrants to other parts of Indonesia, namely the eastern salient of Java, the Masalembu Islands and even some on Kalimantan. The Kangean dialect may be a separate language. It was traditionally written in the Javanese script, but the Latin script and the Pegon script is now more commonly used. The number of speakers, though shrinking, is estimated to be 8–13 million, making it one of the most widely spoken languages in the country. Bawean, a variant of Madurese, is also spoken by Baweanese descendants in Malaysia and Singapore.
Madurese is a Malayo-Sumbawan language of the Malayo-Polynesian language family, a branch of the larger Austronesian language family. Thus, despite apparent geographic spread, Madurese is more related to Balinese, Malay, Sasak and Sundanese, than it is to Javanese, the language used on the island of Java just across Madura Island.
Links between Bali–Sasak languages and Madurese are more evident with the "low" form.

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Madurese has more consonants than its neighboring languages due to it having voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, and voiced sounds. Similar to Javanese, it has a contrast between dental and alveolar stops.

Morphology

Madurese nouns are not inflected for gender and are pluralized via reduplication. Its basic word order is subject–verb–object. Negation is expressed by putting a negative particle before the verb, adjective or noun phrase. As with other similar languages, there are different negative particles for different kinds of negation.

Common words

Numerals

Sample text

From the Article 1 of the Declaration of Human Rights.
Sâdhâjâna orèng lahèr mardhika è sarenge dhrâjhât klabân ha'-ha' sè padâ. Sâdhâjâna èparèngè akal sareng nurani bân kodhu areng-sareng akanca kadhi tarètan.
All Human Beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, they are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.