‘If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.’
– South African anti-apartheid activist, politician, and statesman, Nelson Mandela.
My friends, do you speak your father’s language? If you do, give yourself a pat on the back.
Do you know that many young people now do not know how to speak their native language? This is happening not only in Sarawak but all over the world.
Do you know that currently, there are 573 known extinct languages in the world? These are languages that are no longer spoken or studied.
In Sarawak, four tribal languages spoken by the ethnic groups are now extinct, according to Sarawak Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka (DBP). The languages are Seru, Pegu, Bliun and Lelak.
Sarawak DBP director, Abang Haliman Abang Julai, who revealed this during the 2023 Sarawak Tribal Language General Database (PDUBSS) Workshop said, “Maybe the speakers have migrated or are in a mixed marriage situation and so forth, followed by the diminishing number of the tribes’ communities.”
He added that Sarawak DBP would be working with ethnic and race associations in the state to record and document tribal languages which were almost extinct now.
Although he does not know the actual number of tribal languages which are almost extinct in Sarawak, he believes among them are those from the Kejaman and Lakiput tribes.
Minister of Women, Childhood and Community Wellbeing, Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah recently voiced her concern over the inability of children from Melanau mixed marriages to speak or understand the language.
The Dalat assemblywoman urged the Melanau community to protect and preserve their mother tongue from extinction due to the increasing trend of interracial marriages.
She suggested local organisations such as Persatuan eDOK (Dalat, Oya and Kut) hold informal language learning classes to encourage the younger generation to pick up the native language.
Fatimah admitted that although it was not easy to pick up the various Melanau dialects, she believed the classes would be beneficial in the long run.
“This is so that our children, who are the results of intermarriages, at least know the basic of the Melanau language and are able to converse in it,” she said.
She was speaking at the eDOK Kuching/Samarahan ‘Santuni Kasih Aidiladha’ programme at Jalan Muhibbah in Kuching.
Fatimah also revealed that the Melanau Dalat Assocation had previously collaborated with DBP to publish a Malay-Melanau Dalat glossary for future reference.
She suggested that eDOK Kuching Association seek sponsorship from the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) to produce simple reading materials in the Melanau language.
Fatimah revealed that the Bidayuh community in Serian and the Kelabit in Bario had done so and that all the content materials were produced locally to maintain their authenticity.
My friends, why are so many languages disappearing? According to the Internet, most languages die out gradually as speakers become bilingual and then begin to lose proficiency in their traditional languages. This usually occurs when speakers seek to learn a more prestigious language in order to gain social and economic advantages or to avoid discrimination.
Other reasons for the extinction of languages include migration of people to other lands, influence of the rulers, evolution of language due to cultural fusion, limitation of vocabulary, absence of written script along with prevalence of oral tradition, constant changes in the society and globalisation which leads to the use of only dominant languages.
While driving to work yesterday, I was surprised that Lite FM, a radio station located in Kuala Lumpur, also discussed the mother tongue issue.
However, I only managed to listen to two female listeners’ responses to Deejay Terry as he asked them about the importance of speaking their parents’ languages.
Both listeners agreed that kids should learn to speak their native languages. One listener, an Indian lady, shared how she sent her kids to extra Tamil classes in their school.
Another listener, a Bidayuh from Sarawak, said she spoke her mother’s dialect well but only learnt her father’s dialect much later. Her parents were Bidayuhs who spoke different dialects.
The Bidayuh listener, who’s doing research on disappearing languages in Sarawak, is of the opinion that parents should teach their own languages to their children first at home. She said the children could learn English or Bahasa Malaysia later on in school.
My friends, what is your mother tongue? Is it the language spoken by your father or the language spoken by your mother?
I always thought mother tongue was the language that my father spoke. I discovered yesterday how wrong I was when I referred to Google.
It says, “Mother tongue refers to the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood by the person at the time the data is collected. If the person no longer understands the first language, the mother tongue is the second language learned.”
Based on this explanation, my mother tongue is Hokkien even though my late father was a Hainanese from China. Father was often away at work and when we were young, he seldom spoke Hainanese to us. My mother spoke to us in Hokkien.
Looking back, I wish I had taken the trouble to learn Hainanese somewhere somehow. Maybe things would have turned out a bit different in life.
Do you know that Hainan Associations will only accept Chinese whose fathers are Hainanese as their members? Or that only a Chinese whose father is Foochow can join a Foochow Association?
Many years ago, when I joined the Hainan Association in Kuching as a member of the Women’s Section, I was surprised to discover that most of the proceedings and talks were in Mandarin, not Hainanese. The younger Hainanese mostly conversed in Mandarin.
Hence, I believe that in Sarawak, besides tribal languages spoken by the ethnic groups, some Chinese dialects like Hainanese are also dying out gradually. So what are our race associations and government doing about this?
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.
