How simple can languages get? The case of Riau Indonesian

A. A contrasting case is a dialect of Indonesian spoken in Sumatra, called Riau Indonesian. Standard Indonesian appears “normally” complex to the English speaker, with a certain number of prefixes and endings, a set word order, and so on. But while Tsez makes one wonder how people could speak it without having a stroke, Riau Indonesian makes one wonder how one could speak it and even be understood.

B. This is a dialect spoken by human beings every day that has no endings, no tones, no articles, and no word order at all. Sentences are only placed in time if context alone does not make it clear, and even then, only with such words as already and tomorrow, not with special endings or words used only to mark tense. There is no verb “to be.” The same word means he, she, it, and they.

C. This means that a sentence in Riau Indonesian can have endless meanings according to context. For example, ayam means chicken and makan means eat. The sentence ayam makan can mean, “The chicken is eating,” “The chicken ate,” “The chicken will eat,” “The chicken is being eaten,” “The chicken is making somebody eat,” “Somebody is eating for the chicken,” “The chicken that is eating,” “Where the chicken is eating,” “When the chicken is eating,” “How the chicken is eating,” and so on.

D. But this simplicity is not connected to the fact that its speakers are not First Worlders. Riau Indonesian developed among people who spoke various languages related to Indonesian in Sumatra as first languages and learned Indonesian as a second one. Their first languages are “typical” in complexity, with very complex prefixes, and so on. But as is common among adults, when these people learned Indonesian as a second language, they did not acquire it completely. This is especially common when people learn a language outside of the school setting. Children born into a society where most people are speaking a language incompletely learn that variety and pass it down the generations.