A language survey to support language revitalization among the Kelabit
Date
2024
Authors
Urud, Mutang
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Abstract
The Indigenous Kelabit of Sarawak are experiencing a language shift as we migrate to the cities from the interior pursuing education and employment. To understand this situation, I conducted a community-wide language survey of the Kelabit language as spoken in the village communities of Lung Napir and Lung Seridan. My main question was to discern the status and health of the Kelabit language in our communities. As a longtime cultural and environmental activist and having authored a dictionary on my language, I considered this survey would be helpful for planning and programming to reverse the current trend in Kelabit.
To frame my research design, I used Indigenous research methodologies combining quantitative and qualitative methods with indigenization of the research process. My research is largely informed by existing theories on language shift and ways of reversing it. The methods I used were conducting language forums, a survey and key informant interviews. The survey investigates the language status, participant's attitude to our language and how they perceive its usefulness into the future as well as the health of the language, with respect to its vitality. I conducted six language forums, attended by 157 people, and 108 who completed the survey.
Of significance to our language status is that our data indicates a large majority of the participants express a positive attitude to our language’s future, a clear reflection of the value we place on our Indigenous identity. This is despite an indication that the Kelabit language is ‘definitely endangered’, used mostly by the parental generation and up. Roughly, a third of the participants do not speak the language, and Elders expressed concern regarding its impacts on our language transmission in the context of mixed-marriages and increasing urbanization.
In terms of the language health, almost three quarters of our people continue to speak the language, giving us much hope in reversing the one third who are not. But an alarming development in our community is that two thirds of families do not speak Kelabit to their children, a clear sign of language endangerment. When language shift happens, it loses its function in a society. The work of reversing involves a community restoring those functions. This phenomenon will guide our future activities, in encouraging language use in our daily communications and social events. Recognizing also that our adet (cultural norms), the essence of our identity, and our connection to ancestral land is embedded in our language.
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Keywords
language revitalization, Kelabit language, language shift, endangered, adet