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Lidia Farysa Binti Suffian (201059)
Background of topic
Sarawak is located in the South-western part of Borneo Island and separated from Malaysia Peninsular by the South China Sea (Aman, 2009). The term of Malay in Sarawak is being introduced by James Brooke as “all coastal, sea-fearing Moslem in the archipelago” (Robert Pringle,1970) though most of the Sarawak Malay do not declare themselves as Malay but James Brooke has put the title for their community. Originally in the earliest history back 2500 years to 5000 years ago, the dialect of Sarawak Malayic has existed from the tribes of Austronesia that also included the original Malay language from Malay mainland. The existence of Sarawak Malay dialect has placed it in the subgroup of Hesperonesian languages from Western Indonesia originally from Dayak languages (Yahya, 2015). In Sarawak, there are various of Malay dialects spoken, whereby severally have close connection to languages spoken by non-Muslim or non-Malay groups in the state. Malay dialects spoken in Sarawak are mostly Sarawak Malay, Brunei Malay and Kadayan. In fact, different regions in Sarawak have different lexical and pronunciation use of Sarawak Malay that identified their identity from different areas. Hence, it shows the uniqueness of Sarawak Malay dialect. The use of Sarawak Malay dialect brings an important role to the community in Sarawak as a lingua franca to communicate with Sarawakians who came from multiracials like Malay, Dayak, Melanau, Ulu people, Bisaya, Kedayan, Miriek and Chinese.
Interesting aspect of topic
In Sarawak, the community that came from different backgrounds, religion, and culture chooses Sarawak Malay dialect as a main dialect in the way of communicating with each other, and the standard Malay dialect is also being used with no limits precisely at work and at the school. Nowadays, the old vocabulary of Sarawak Malay dialect is barely used by the young generations. It is because they would find ways to communicate in the simplest words that could be crystal clear by everyone. For instance, the word “gadongagak” means green colour is the word mostly used back in the 70's, but now they only use the word “ijo” to refer to the green colour (Bolhassan, 2019). Thus, the young generations in this modern time are more likely to use Standard Malay in the Sarawak Malay dialect. However, sometimes the use of Standard Malay and Sarawak Malay dialect in communicating are being combined whereby it has the same spelling and pronunciation but brings a different meaning to one and another. For example, the word “tangga” [taŋ.ga] in Sarawak Malay dialect means to see or to watch, but in Standard Malay means a set of steps that leading from one floor to another floor of building, and another word, “tetak” [te.taɁ] in Sarawak Malay dialect means to laugh, meanwhile in Standard Malay means to cut things (Bolhassan, 2019). Hence, it could bring confusion to the tourists and public sector workers that came from outside of Sarawak in understanding the dialect as they may misinterpret some words into different meanings.
Concept relate with aspect
A dialect spoken is more than just a pronunciation as it also includes other factors. The differences of dialects are influenced by geographical, political, colonialism, economical and era (Mahmood, 1993). Hence, as a result, Malay dialects in different regions can be mutual and non-mutually intelligible. It is difficult to find the mutual understanding of the dialect between Sarawak Malay dialect and Malay dialect in the Peninsular area. However, Kadayan Malay that is a subgroup in Malay dialect in Sarawak has the influences of high mutual intelligble dialect use with Brunei Malay dialect because of the geographical factor in the areas of Brunei, Sarawak in Lembah Baram, Sabah and Labuan that live traditionally by the river and estuary areas. Nonetheless, Kadayan Malay dialect is not a part of subdialect in Brunei dialect since it is still classified in Malay dialect in Malay language (Omar, 1988). For instance, Kadayan Malay dialect shares the same meaning and word use of the words “morning” and “monkey” with Malay Brunei dialect, where “sambat” is morning and “ambuk” is a monkey (Othman, 2016). Indeed, geographical location did an important role to let us distinguish that there are a few dialects from different regions can have a near connection of the words use and some dialects may have nothing in common to each other due to the location apart.
Support Relation of concept to the Topic
Political movements, geographical changes occurred in part of various regions and eras were inextricably and massively linked with language. Many regions are currently dealing with separatist movements that are primarily based on languages or dialects (Garcia, 2015). Not only that, in this modern era, the dialect use has been shrinking and the seniority of dialects cannot be maintained forever with the changes that will happen over the time which will expand more new words in every day life. However, languages around the world have its own varieties and dialects use by different individuals and it determined by the speaker’s geographical background (Abu Shareah, 2015) of regions and geographical location could help to distinguish the dialect spoken by the representative from different regions to another regions (Yule, 2020). For instance, in Sarawak, Sarawak Malay dialect in Kuching can be different with the area of Saribas, Sebuyau and Serian, also, Brunei Malay dialect and Kadayan dialect are mostly spoken by the speakers from Miri, Bekenu and Bintulu areas because their landscape is in the nothern Sarawak near the sandy beaches that link to Brunei, Labuan and Sabah. Hence, regional dialects and geographical location are crucial in identifying the differences of dialects used in different regions.
References
References
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Abu shareah, M. A. Q., Mudhsh, B. A. D. M., & AL-Takhayinh, A. H. (2015). An overview on dialectical variation. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 5(6).
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Omar, A. (2004). Languages of Sarawak: In the encyclopedia of Malaysia. Archipelago Press. (Vol 9., Ser 34-35.)
Othman, N. (2016). Sejarah dan latar belakang masyarakat kedayan. Journal of Islamic Dakwah, 8(2).
Pringle, R. (2010). Rajahs and rebels: the Ibans of Sarawak under Brooke rule, 1841-1941. Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.
Yahya Sawek, R. W. (2019). Absorption element of standard malay word in Iban language and Sarawak Malay dialect. International Journal of Humanities, Philosophy and Language, 166–178. https://doi.org/10.35631/ijhpl.260014
Yule, G. (2020). The study of language. Cambridge University Press.
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