Language documentation and maintenance programs for Moluccan languages in the Netherlands

Abstract

This paper reports on an unusual situation in which the documentation of endangered and moribund languages of the Moluccas region of eastern Indonesia is being undertaken in a migrant community rather than in the indigenous setting. This region has the highest level of language endangerment in Indonesia and perhaps throughout the Austronesian language family. However, the task of documentation is now severely restricted in the homeland because of interethnic violence, which erupted in the regional capital of Ambon City in late 1998 and has since spread throughout the Moluccan islands. Research by the authors among the community of Moluccan migrants in the Netherlands has uncovered remaining speakers of approximately twenty-®ve languages indigenous to the Moluccas. At least three of these languages (Amahei, Kamarian, and Seruan) are both locally and globally endangered and the presence of remaining speakers in the immigrant setting may provide the only opportunity to undertake salvage work. A brief background to the sociopolitical history of Moluccans in the Netherlands following waves of migration in the 1950s and 1960s provides a context for the analysis of the linguistic economy in the migrant community. We discuss why the existence of indigenous languages was concealed for several decades. The categorization of generations of speakers and language usage within each generation is investigated. Several case studies describe the di€erent kinds of language maintenance and renewal activities that are being undertaken by members of di€erent ethnolinguistic groups.