Thursday, July 16, 2009

Salako Origin II

Tonight, as I sit without a shirt because the weather seems so warm. I sip a can of beer imported and made in Germany. Its cool and Refreshing....My fingers is following my minds instruction. My Laptop mouse never stop moving looking for what I'm still longing to know, but I have a limited knowledge.
I managed to open one good web page that explain about Salako or Kanayathn. Within this article, which is a book review by Clifford Sather, posted at the Borneo Annual Research Bulletin in 2005, about the book written by K. Alexander Adelaar , 2005, Salako or Badamea. Sketch Grammar, Texts and Lexicon of a Kanayatn Dialect in West Borneo.
After a few times reading about this book review, deep inside me I began to feel proud to be born as a Salako or Kanayatn ( our West Kalimantan, Indonesia counterpart ) which speak the same language. From this book review by Clifford Sather, its a proof and clearly written why Salako is different from other Bidayuh Community in Sarawak. As Clifford Sather wrote:"Confusingly, in Sarawak, the Salako dialect has been mistakenly identified in the past as a variety of Bidayuh (or Land Dayak). While certainly living in close contact and culturally influenced by the Bidayuh, the dialect spoken by the Salako, as Adelaar makes eminently clear, is unmistakably Malayic, not Bidayuh."
Beside this written proof of the different Salako had with other Bidayuh Community as interpreted in Sarawak, the surprise facts that made me more proud, its seem Salako language is the key points in Proto-Malayic as an early form of a Malay language. As Prof.K Alexander Adelaar wrote in his book :THE RELEVANCE OF SALAKO FOR PROTO-MALAYIC AND FOR OLD MALAY EPIGRAPHY, he wrote: "In this paper I would like to demonstrate that Salako is of geat importante for the reconstruction of Proto-Malayic (henceforth referred to as PM) phonology, lexicon and, particularly, morphology.' I also wish to show that Salako, because of its conservative morphology and lexicon, throws new light on the inscriptions of Telaga Batu (South Sumatra) and Gandasuli (Java). It provides key arguments for considering the language of these inscriptions as an early form of Malay. The identification of this language has in the past been a matter of doubt, in spite of the fact that for the sake of convenience it has usually been referred to as 'Old Malay'."

Alas, I think I began to understand a bit about Salako , but as I said earlier in my post, there is still a lot of question unanswered in my mind.

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