Kupang Malay or simply the Kupang language is a Malay-based creole language spoken in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, which is on the west end of Timor Island. Kupang Malay is presently used as a lingua franca for inter-ethnic communication, and it also has native speakers.^[2]

It is based on archaic Malay mixed mostly with Dutch, Portuguese, and other local languages. It is similar to Ambonese Malay with several differences in vocabulary and accent. Its grammatical system resembles other Eastern Indonesian Malay creoles.

Kupang Malay originated sometime before the 17th century.^[3] Kupang Malay has Rotinese influence.^[4]

Like Indonesian, words in Kupang Malay are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable.^[2] Some words are stressed on the final syllable as they would be in their source languages. This results in some contrastive stress.

The vowels of Kupang Malay are shown in the chart below.

Unlike in Indonesian, there is no schwa in Kupang Malay.^[2]

The "ia ,"ie, "io",and iu,reduces to iya, iye, iyo, iyu or nua, oa, os becomes nuwa, woa, wos.

The consonants of Kupang Malay are shown in the chart below.

Kupang Malay has intervocalic glottal stops in some words from which originate from other local languages or Arabic.^[2]

• The lack of foreign letters e.g. "z","v",and"q"

For example;

• Zaman → Saman
• Video → Fideo
• Qatar → Katar

The pronouns in Kupang Malay differ from Indonesian as shown in the table below.

Reduplication is frequent. Reduplication can express several things such as: variety, similarity, repetition, non-urgency, and aimlessness.^[4]

The word order of Kupang Malay is mixed Malay and the Helong language.

Possessives are formed by placing a possessive particle, pung after the possessor and before the possessed item.

"Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) - East Timor (ET) Vernacular Language Dictionaries (Kamus)". Archived from the original on 9 May 2020.

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