This paper presents preliminary results on Cocos Malay as spoken by the inhabitants of Home Island in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands based on an upcoming 12-week fieldwork period. The presentation aims at providing an ecolinguistic account of this variety of Malay, touching on the following aspects:

(a)	the evolution of the language and its possible substrates
(b)	the relationship between Cocos Malay and other colloquial Malay varieties
(c)	the current status of the speech community and the shift it has undergone as a result of changes in the linguistic environment (population movements, education system etc.)

Cocos Malay is an interesting variety of Malay for the following reasons:

(i) It is a little known variety of Malay on which limited research has been carried out (cf. Adelaar & Prentice 1996).

(ii) It is a unique contact variety as, due to geographical and historical circumstances, it has been isolated from other Malay varieties, and has been influenced by Chinese, Javanese and, more recently, English and Bahasa Melayu. Patterns found in such a variety can shed light on processes of language contact, and provide a good control for comparison in investigating the 'mixed' varieties of Malay such as Bazaar Malay and Baba Malay found in Singapore, due in part to the colonial past and present situation in which different ethnic groups live in contact with each other.

(iii) With English-medium education having been introduced to the Islands as well as Bahasa Indonesia being the medium for second language instruction, Cocos Malay is expected to be undergoing a significant shift as a result of its adaptation to a rapidly-changing environment.