Table Of ContentAdditional material to this book can be downloaded from http://extras.springer.com
ISBN 978-94-011-8247-8 ISBN 978-94-011-8925-5 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-94-011-8925-5
Copyright 1958 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Martinus NijhoJf in 1958
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reduce this book or parts thereof in any form.
CONTENTS
Preface 1
Introduction . 3
Malay dialects 7
Kendayan Dayak and Land Dayak . 13
Melanau . . . . . . 17
Bisaya. . . . . . . . . 20
Sarawak Murut dialects. . . 21
North Borneo Murut dialects. 23
Dusun . 24
Bajau . 27
Ubian . 28
IIlanun. 28
Bulud-Upi 28
Sulu 29
Tidung dialects . 29
Sajau Basap and other Basap dialects . 31
Labu ...... . 31
Central Borneo languages 32
Punan Ba, Beketan, Ukit 36
Modang ..... . 38
Embaloh ..... . 38
Maanyan, Si(h)ong, Samihim, Dusun, Dusun De(y)ah 39
Lawangan 41
Tabuyan . 42
Ngaju .. 42
Ot Danum 45
The JPelling of geographical name! and nameJ of languageJ
iJ according to the BngliJh romanization of Malay.
PREFACE
At the completion of this bibliography, the second of the planned
series on language study in Indonesia, the authors acknowledge with
gratitude the kind assistance of Father Donatus Dunselman, Dr A. H.
Hill and Dr P. Voorhoeve who have read all or part of the manuscript.
Also our heartfelt thanks are due to those who have provided us with
information indispensable for the compilation of the bibliographical
data, or have given us the opportunity to inspect their archives for
linguistic literature on Borneo, i.e. the very Rev. A. Antonissen,
Jesselton, North Borneo, Father W. Boon, Rector of the Catholic
Mission, Mukah, Sarawak, Dr N. C. Scott, the Society for promoting
Christian Knowledge, London, the British and Foreign Bible Society,
London, the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, the
Basle Mission, Basle, Switzerland, the Rhenish Mission, Wuppertal,
Germany, the Dutch Bible Society, Amsterdam.
The authors greatly appreciate the grant from the Netherland
Institute for International Cultural Relations which made this public
ation possible.
A. A. CENSE
E. M. UHLENBECK
1
]ll< AUGUST HARDELAND
INTRODUCTION
Among the four large islands of Indonesia it is Borneo which has
been least studied from a linguistic point of view. Only very few, more
extensive linguistic descriptions and collections of texts have been
published. Other published data consist mainly of incidental remarks
of explorers and travellers, who in their works occasionally also in
cluded wordlists, terms for various institutions and sometimes a few
set phrases or isolated words. The most important contribution to the
knowledge of many Bornean languages is due to missionary effort.
The Bible translations and other translations of christian literature,
valuable when no original texts are available, are for many languages
often practically the only source of information.
It is impossible to provide a reliable picture of the present linguistic
situation on the island by means of these data. On numerous points
the mutual relation between the languages is highly uncertain, whilst
their geographical distribution can either not be indicated, or only be
outlined approximatively. Furthermore, the data at our disposal are
of greatly differing date; the present situation will therefore often not
quite correspond to the indications to be met with in the older sources.
It is beyond doubt that in the course of time migration and im
migration have taken place on a large scale. These movements have
of course had their effect on the languages; a comparatively short
period of time may suffice to create a new linguistic situation.
Although no sufficient data are available to permit of giving an
outline of the events which led to the present distribution, the im
pression is very strong that the process of the penetration of Malay
dialects in Borneo has been at work already for centuries, albeit with
varying intensity. It cannot be determined to what extent groups of the
population of Borneo who originally spoke other languages have
exchanged their languages for these Malay dialects. In any case, it is
to be observed at present that on Borneo, along the coasts and along the
rivers up to deep into the interior, languages are spoken which, in
spite of small differences between them, show a striking similarity with
4
Malay as it is used, with many variations, over a large area on Sumatra
and in the Malay peninsula. This similarity is so striking that scholars
have been fully justified in calling them Malay dialects. Other languages,
which are occasionally indicated by a name of their own, like Banja
rese and Sea Dayak will undoubtedly have to be counted among these
dialects.
Among the languages of the interior are some whose structure shows
rather strong points of resemblance with the Malay dialects although
it has become customary to consider them as languages by themselves.
Because we do not pretend to provide a new division of the languages
of Borneo we shall base ourselves on the extant literature and discuss
these languages separately, beside the Malay dialects.
From ethnographical literature we know that in North Borneo
several groups have settled who are of Philippine origin and who
continue to use Philippine languages. Beside these, however, languages
of a clearly marked Philippine type are spoken over a wider area in
the North. It is possible that here we have to do with immigrations
that took place in a more distant past, but this is again difficult to
prove. Again it should be noted that settlements of the Bajau are to
be found here, i.e. of the weIlknown sea-gypsies who are also to be
met with in large parts of eastern Indonesia and in the southern part
of the Philippines. Large Bugis settlements are found in several places
along the coasts. In Kutai and Pasir an important part of the population
is Buginese. Especially in Pegatan in the south-east corner of Borneo
they exercise a considerable influence. In a volume devoted to Celebes
the literature on this language will be discussed. Finally the remark
should be added that in some coastal areas and along a few of the
great rivers Chinese dialects are spoken. They will not be discussed
in this survey. The Sanscrit inscriptions found in Kutai and discussed
by Vogel (BKI 74 (1918) ) fall outside the scope of our book.
The first attempts to give an impression of the number and the
diversity of the languages spoken on Borneo were undertaken by
authors of compilations of mostly ethnographical literature. A large
5
number of wordlists of languages mainly spoken in Sarawak and
British North Borneo - collected by H. Brooke Low and others -
have been reproduced by Ling Roth (1), but the latter was still unable
to arrive at any arrangement or even at a mere comparison of the
wordlists he printed. This work was only undertaken by Sidney Ray,
that remarkable student of languages, who in 1913 published an enumer
ation of the material at his disposal (2): printed books and articles,
as well as manuscript wordlists, i.e. those he was able to consult, or
those he compiled personally during his short stay on Borneo from
the end of 1898 to the beginning of 1899. In particular, he made an
extensive use of a manuscript by A. B. Meyer (died in 1911). The
latter had been engaged for a considerable time in compiling "a com
prehensive bibliographical and statistical account of the languages of
Eastern Indonesia" and had sent round for this purpose wordlists,
established after the model of the linguistic Report of the Cambridge
Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits by Ray, to a number of
British officials of the Sarawak Government. Not many of the data
available at the time escaped Ray's attention. There is only one lexico
graphical work of importance, viz. Barth's Busang-Dutch dictionary
of 1910 (213) which is not to be found in his bibliography, which
contains no less than 276 items.
Ray's division rests mainly on a geographical basis; it is in five
groups. He distinguished 1. languages of Lower Sarawak, 2. languages
of Netherlands territory, 3. languages of Upper Sarawak, 4. North
Borneo languages,S. Malay. Within this framework he attempted to
make further distinctions, using the terms "language" and "dialect"
to indicate gradations in similarity. In this way he arrived provisionally
at assuming the existence of· thirty different languages for the whole
of Borneo; within these thirty languages he then often distinguished
between numerous dialects. For the Melanau of Lower Sarawak he
mentions e.g. no less than five groups of dialects.
Beside some data concerning the pronouns and numerals in these
languages and some general remarks, Ray added to his bibliography
a list of 211 words in the different Borneo languages, as far as the
material at his disposal allowed him to do. For a survey of the literature
up to 1913 Ray's work was indispensable.
