Many small languages from eastern Indonesia are threatened with extinction.While it is often assumed that ?Indonesian? is replacing the lost languages, inreality, local languages are being replaced by local Malay. In this paper I reviewsome of the reasons for this in North Maluku. I review the directional system inNorth Maluku Malay and argue that features like the directionals allow thosegiving up local languages to retain a sense of local linguistic identity. Retainingsuch an identity makes it easier to abandon local languages than would be thecase if people were switching to ?standard? Indonesian.