Mardijker is an extinct Portuguese-based creole of Jakarta. It was the native tongue of the Mardijker people. The language was introduced with the establishment of the Dutch settlement of Batavia (present-day Jakarta); the Dutch brought in slaves from the colonies they had recently acquired from the Portuguese, and the slaves' Portuguese creole became the lingua franca of the new city. The name is Dutch for "freeman", as the slaves were freed soon after their settlement. The language was replaced by Betawi creole Malay in Batavia by the end of the 18th century, as the Mardijker intermarried and lost their distinct identity. However, around 1670 a group of 150 were moved to what is now the village and suburb of Tugu, where they retained their language, there known as Papiá, until the 1940s.

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Quick Facts Native to, Region ...

Mardijker
Batavian Creole Portuguese
Papiá Tugu
Mardijkers in 1704 and in the background, presumably the land granted to them outside Batavia, now Kampung Tugu. The building is possibly the original Tugu Church.[1]
Native to	Indonesia
Region	Jakarta
Ethnicity	Mardijker people
Language family	Portuguese-based creole languages Indo-Portuguese creoles Malaccan–Batavia Creole Mardijker
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	None mala1533  Malacca–Batavia Creole
Linguasphere	51-AAC-ahd
IETF	idb-u-sd-idjk

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The earliest known record of the language is documented in a wordlist published in Batavia in 1780, the Nieuwe Woordenschat.^[2] The last competent speaker, Oma Mimi Abrahams, died in 2012, and the language survives only in the lyrics of old songs of the genre Keroncong Moresco (Keroncong Tugu).^[3]