The State of Indigenous Languages in Brunei
According to Nothofer (1991), the Austronesian languages and dialects spoken in Brunei are Belait , Bisaya , Dusun, Brunei Malay, Kampung Ayer Malay, Kedayan , Standard Malay, Murut , Tutong, Mukah, Iban andPenan . Nothofer grouped Brunei Malay, Kampung A
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The State of Indigenous Languages in Brunei Noor Azam Haji-Othman and Siti Ajeerah Najib
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Introduction
According to Nothofer (1991), the Austronesian languages and dialects spoken in Brunei are Belait, Bisaya, Dusun, Brunei Malay, Kampung Ayer Malay, Kedayan, Standard Malay, Murut, Tutong, Mukah, Iban and Penan. Nothofer grouped Brunei Malay, Kampung Ayer Malay, Kedayan and Standard Malay together as the ‘Malay group’, and labelled the remaining codes ‘Non-Malay’. Following the treatment of these languages by Martin and Poedjosoedarmo (1996, p. 13), the latter group can be further divided into three groups: the Dusunic languages consisting of Dusun and Bisaya; the Murutic group which just includes Murut (or Lun Bawang); and the North Sarawak group that consists of Belait and Tutong. Dusun, the subject of the case study presented in this chapter, and Bisaya are ‘mutually intelligible dialects’ (Nothofer 1991, p. 155) despite the fact that they are listed as separate ethnic groups in the Brunei Constitution. All of these languages have undergone language shift, with some languages faring better than others. Language shift in Brunei has rarely been discussed purely on a linguistic basis, but it has often been described within a cultural framework by researchers over the last few years. Leach (1950) was one of the earliest to record sociolinguistic change by saying the ‘ethnic population have become Malay’. Brown (1960, p. 4) then spoke of the ‘merging of lesser ethnic groups with the greater’, while Maxwell (1980) refers to the shifts as ‘semantic reclassification’. Martin (1990, p. 130; 2002) suggests a causal link between ‘cultural and linguistic redefinition’ and the contact and movement of previously rural populations with the coastal culture, which at the same time broke down the social network support for ethnic language and culture maintenance—a process which Jones (1994) refers to as ‘assimilation into the Noor Azam Haji-Othman (&) Siti Ajeerah Najib FASS/UBD, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link, Gadong BE1410, Brunei Darussalam e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 Noor Azam Haji-Othman et al. (eds.), The Use and Status of Language in Brunei Darussalam, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0853-5_3
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Noor Azam Haji-Othman and Siti Ajeerah Najib
coastal culture’. Braighlinn (1992, p. 19) calls the same phenomenon of change a ‘convergence on a dominant Malay culture’. In relation to this process of cultural shift, Gunn (1997, p. 6) argues that the linguistic impact from explicit as well as implicit pressure for more use of Malay in Brunei has been a visible shift away from ethnic languages to the Malay language through Islamicization and Malayicization. These processes, sometimes called ‘nation-building’ or ‘Bruneization’ (Noor Azam 2005), involve a shift in both language and identity as a result of voluntary acquiescence on the part of the ethnic groups themselves. Researchers have also made observations about the specific linguistic impact experienced by t
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