‘Bah! Aram Berandau: Teroka Bumi Kenyalang Dan Negeri Bawah Bayu’ was a programme held by our LG243 comrades in Part 2 together with the lecturers, under the faculty for Service Learning Malaysia - University for Society (SULAM). The moderator of the session, Amirah Aiman together with 2 panels of the forum, Dr Raymond Majumah, a book author, and Ms Veronica Petrus who is a lecturer at University Malaysia Sabah discussed the variety of languages in Sabah. It was on Facebook Live last Friday, 29th January 2021, starting from 8 PM until 9.40 PM. In case you missed that out, we are here to recap the whole session for you!
This programme was held to foster awareness as well as to provide exposure about the languages used by the minorities of East Malaysia. Before they started the session with the two speakers of the night, Dr. Airil Haimi Adnan or better known as Teech, the Deputy Dean of APB Student Affairs, launched the programme with some speech as an opening. It was a very informative session as they discussed many aspects of the languages. Although the initial focuses were Sarawak and Sabah’s languages and cultures, it was unfortunate that the speaker representing Bumi Kenyalang could not join the session due to some reasons. Despite that, we had a good time listening to the sharing from Dr Raymond, from the Rungus ethnic and Ms. Veronica, who is from Bundu, both being sub ethnics under Kadazan-Dusun.
The first speaker, Ms Veronica shared her view on the relation between her language and culture. She mentioned how both language and culture cannot be separated and how by the language itself, we can see the worldview of a culture. Back in the old days, these ethnic languages were used by her grandparents through folk tales as a tool to teach the languages. It was foreign for her at first but it became a language that she is used to listen to. However, unlike the old days, not every family implements the same technique to transmit the language anymore.
Throughout the session, she had taught us some characteristics of the Dusun language - there are multiple ways to say something, no honorifics used, different structure of sentence, similarities and differences to the Malay language. For the first characteristic, she mentioned how there are multiple ways to say the word “memotong” like ridin, to cut fruits (slice) or orin, to cut vegetables. Then, she shared about her experience talking to her students who are not used to the Dusun language itself due to the no honorifics used. For example, the students are used to calling her Madam instead of addressing her as “kamu” which is normal in her culture to do so despite the age or rank differences and it becomes unnatural for her. Their structure of sentences is also different compared to Malay language. This is because, unlike Malay sentences that are conjugated by the Subject-Verb-Object rule, Dusun sentences on the other hand are formed following the Verb-Subject-Object rule.
Ms. Veronica shared with us how these two languages, Dusun and Malay have similarities as both of them come from the same family of languages which is Austronesia. For example, the word ‘bunga’ in Malay language is also used to refer to ‘flower’ in the Dusun language. However, the pronunciation is a bit different where they put a stress marker at the end of the word - bunga’ which makes it sound like there is a ‘k’ at the end of it. Despite the similarities, there are also some differences between these two languages. Ms. Veronica explained how some Malay words are inverted in Dusun language such as the word seluar (trouser) is inverted into serual and the word lidah (tongue) changed to dilah in Dusun language.
Dr Raymond, the second speaker, also mentioned how the Rungus culture and its language is closely related to one another. The language spoken in daily life is different from the one used for rituals and worships - only those involved in the rituals would understand. Other than that, he also said that in case of folk songs and tales, the language used is mostly figurative (berkias) and it is not as direct as daily conversations. When it comes to customs and practices, the practitioners are highly knowledgeable as they use sambatan (idioms) and suriban (figurative language) when speaking. Dr Raymond also sang some folk songs (dihohoi) and read some poems in Rungus to showcase the uniqueness of the language.
Moreover, according to Dr Raymond, he found that the languages in the Austronesian family are very similar yet so different. His experience in Brunei proved him true as he could not exactly understand the locals when they speak. However, when he got into a house there, there were labels of the parts of houses - which he could understand well. He also mentioned that the part where most Austronesian languages in Southeast Asia differ in would be the numeral system. He also mentioned how even being under the same cultural community, Kadazan-Dusun, there are still differences among the languages spoken. This does not only prove how unique a language is, but also how it is related to the culture of a society.
At the end of the session, both speakers conveyed their final thoughts regarding their language and culture. Ms Veronica mentioned how there are some languages of the Kadazan-Dusun sub-ethnics being at 6b in the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption scale above - meaning they are threatened to extinction due to the modernisation, as well as the small size of ethnic groups. Therefore, she hopes that the usage of the Dusun language in songs is continued. Especially during festivals, there would be singing competitions held and the song choices are encouraged to be conducted in the Dusun language instead of other languages.
Ms Veronica’s point of view on how we can learn the language better is through the culture so it is best that we interact with the native speakers. If we do not speak the language of our own culture, it will be a great loss to ourselves as language holds the identity of a culture. A question was asked to Dr Raymond if these languages will still be used in 30 years to come and he said yes, but only with the efforts we have today. However, as the languages evolve through the century, the ancient or classic version of these languages might be gone and forgotten - which is a reminder for us to preserve our language and culture.
We bid thank you to the people in charge and the speakers for the wonderful input we managed to get from the programme. We hope for more sessions like this to come in the future!
You can watch the full session here: https://fb.watch/3l82CIW8qP/
Proofread by Ilyana Elisa & Illya-Wardina
Published by Muhammad Hadwan & Aisyah Hanim
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