Sabah Dialect

Sabah is known as the second largest state in Malaysia consisting of five administrative divisions including Tawau, Sandakan, Kudat, The West Coast and the Interior Division. Being the largest state of Malaysia, not only it has many languages, Sabah has also a variety of over 80 dialects. It is now commonly accepted that there are 32 Sabah’s languages are indigenous to the state associated with 32 major ethnic entities (Herman, 2003). Through the formation of Malaysia in 1963, the people of Sabah have accepted the Malay language as the national and official language of Malaysia. Though, the Malay language has been used in the northernmost regions of Borneo since the fourteenth century because of the expansion of the Brunei Sultanate (Hoogervorst, 2011). Sabah, together with Sarawak, was a part of the Kingdom of Brunei back in the 14th century. It was the language of trade and administration under the Sultanate of Brunei or known as ‘lingua-franca’ and was already used as a language of interethnic group communication. Until now, Malay language has continued to be the language of interaction among 52 indigeneous ethnic groups in Sabah namely Dusun, Kadazan, Bajau, Rungus and Murut. There are also immigrant groups in Sabah that spoke in Malay language such as Bugis, Javanese, Suluk and Chinese. Over time, the Malay language spoken by the people of Sabah has prolonged its social function from being a lingua franca to one widely used dialect. With its membership in the Federation of Malaysia, Sabah currently has an increasing number of first and second language speakers of Malay language.

Each regional dialect has its own discourse particles that only people in that particular area use in their daily lives. According to Hoogervorst (2009), he finds at least nineteen items in colloquial Malay functioning as discourse markers in Malaysia. Sabah is very famous with its discourse particles, especially the particle ‘bah’ rather than ‘gia’. A non- Sabahan would immediately recognize a person is from Sabah if they use the particle ‘bah’. However, a Sabahan would be very annoyed for a non-Sabahan to use ‘bah’ in every sentence. Though, the use of discourse particles in informal communication for a non-native speakers seems to face a little difficulty in correctly interpreting their meaning in context (Li et al, 2016). Other than discourse particles in Sabah, the people of Johor is another example of other regional dialects that also have its notable discourse particles known as ‘ek’ to attract the listener’s attention. For example when a person is asking where to eat, a ‘Johorian’ would say “Nak makan mana ek?”. In addition, according to Hoogervorst (2009), Standard Malay Dialect shows many various discourse particles that underwent considerable phonological along with semantic change from the words which were presumably derived and resulting in a collection of separate and commonly used discourse particles including ‘jom’ , ‘meh’ , and ‘kot’. Extensively, each regional dialect has its own discourse particles that can be immediately recognizable by other regions just by hearing it. As opposed to Standard Malay Dialect, colloquial Malay requires the occurrence of phonologically truncated forms and the extensive use of the discourse particles. As mentioned, the use of one discourse particle can be employed in different situations as well. For example the word ‘bah’, not only can be used in a question, but also as a statement. Discourse particles in every regional dialect can portray a speaker’s attitude or emotions towards what is being said in a conversation.