Aisyah Umairah Binti Mohd Najmi (200326)
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.
Interesting aspect of Sabah dialect is that it has its own famously ‘Discourse particles’ or ‘Discourse markers’. Discourse particles is a word or a phrase that plays a role in managing the flow and the structure of a word. It is small, morphologically invariable lexical items that do not have any obvious meaning. Discourse particles can usually be found in informal speech on the utterances they modify. The two most frequently used discourse particles in Sabah dialect are ‘gia’ and ‘bah’. The word ‘gia’ originates from Kadazandusun and is most frequently used in that area by ethnic Kadazandusun. ‘Gia’ is constantly used only in three situations including in a question, in an imperative or negative imperative structure and in declarative utterances. For example, the word ‘gia’ used in a question asking about someone’s name, “Sapa gia nama ko punya kawan”, meaning in Standard Malay Dialect as “Siapa nama kawan kau?” without any use of discourse particles. Other than that, the particle ‘bah’ is found in several of Borneo’s regional languages. ‘Bah’ is also characterized as a particle that occurs more often and in more different ways in Sabah dialect, which is also seen as ‘overused’. According to Hoogervorst (2011), in Sabah, if one person is overhearing an entire telephone conversation, it would most likely to be filled with ‘bah’. In contrast to the particle ‘gia’, the particle ‘bah’ can constitute intonational segments by itself. ‘Bah’ is usually used as an agreement marker, a politeness marker, an emphatic marker, a question marker, an exhortative, an interruptive marker and a way to end a conversation. For instance, in a conversation where a person uses the politeness marker by asking where they are going, “Ko pigi mana bah?”, meaning in Standard Malay Dialect as “Kamu nak pergi mana?” using the particle ‘nak’ functions as a temporal verbal auxiliary denoting imminent.
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.
S A B A H !
Herman. (2003). Languages of Sabah. https://www.flyingdusun.com/004_Features/018_Languages.htm
Hoogervorst, T. (2009, february 14). Discourse particles in colloquial Malay https://indoling.com/ismil/13/abstracts/Hoogervorst%20abstract%20ISMIL%2013.pdf
Hoogervorst, T. (2011, september). Some introductory notes on the development and characteristics of Sabah Malay. Wacana Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia. file:///C:/Users/USER/Downloads/Some_introductory_notes_on_the_development_and_cha.pdf
Hoogervorst, T. (2018). Utterance-final particles in Klang Valley Malay. 19, 291-326. https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.17510%2Fwacana.v19i2.704
Jane Wong Kon Lin. (2012, September 10). The Sabah Malay Dialect: A Phonological Study of the Urban Dialect of Kota Kinabalu. http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/5575/2/2.Chapter_1.pdf