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The Ternate language became the lingua franca in the era of the Ternate kingdom in North
Maluku. However, Ternate Malay did not become a language of communication but rather
became a mystical language that referred to religion and language with cultural references.
For the Gamkonora people living in West Halmahera, the Ternate language appeared in
many dolabololo which was known as a mystical language. That was to say that the Ternate
language was used to utter mantras or expressions of religion which were not open to the
public. Meanwhile, across North Maluku, the Ternate Malay language remained popular as
an lingua franca. People in North Maluku said that they could speak Indonesian but what
we heard was Ternate Malay. Thus, Ternate and Ternate Malay languages served as lingua
francas in North Maluku.
There are two things that will be discussed in the following section: (1) the complex
linguistic situation in North Maluku, and (2) language kinship that can demonstrate
linguistic ties among languages there.

The Meeting of Two Language Families in North Maluku
Halmahera Island, a part of North Maluku province territory, exhibits a complex linguistic
situation because of three things: (1) Halmahera is the meeting place between Austronesian
language speakers living in South Halmahera and non-Austronesian language speakers
living in North Halmahera (Masinambow, 1980, Taber, 1996). Counts for the number
of languages in the region were 12 Austronesian languages and 15 non-Austronesian
languages (Grimes and Grimes, 1984: 43, 48); (2) in West Halmahera particularly, the
Gamkonora people with 1,500 speakers (Lewis et al., 2015), could be a language case that
could not be separated from the complexity of socio-cultural conditions. The Gamkonora
language has both non-Austronesian and Austronesian language features; (3) The socio-
cultural conditions are complex, not only because of the two language families in the
region but also because of the similarity of linguistic characteristics spreading more widely
even in Papua, especially in the Bird’s Head area. For Masinambow, language alone cannot
be used as a sign of ethnicity. How would it be if a lack of compatibility between cultural
homogeneity and linguistic heterogeneity? Because, if the linguistic differentiation was
based only on vocabulary while linguistic structure spread beyond ethnic region, then this
could be considered as a memory during the proto language only (Masinambow, 1980: 72).
The focus here is not so much about ethnic affinities with the language as proto
linguistic assumptions questioning the spread of vocabulary and grammatical structures
beyond ethnic boundaries that could be used as a reference to see the geographical linkage

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