17 Julai 2009
After a hectic morning schedule, I prefer to have a decent afternoon naps. Around 4.00 pm, I woke-up, took my bath, and have my afternoon snack. Then I turn to my laptop, look at my e-mails, but mostly trash.
After reading my e-mails, I type "Salako River Population" within the search taps at my search engine. It is here where I found one interesting facts from the Dayak Bidayuh National Association (DBNA).
It open-up my prejudice mind again. Its seem so strange to me, after reading one of the article at DBNA web page written by the Bidayuh intellectuals, title:"Problems and Prospects Facing Bidayuh Mother Tongue Education." Maybe, I still doesn't have the answer to my question, Why should Salako be considered the Bidayuh Community?
From this article, one of the paragraph says that, " Lastly, the intra-dialectal and inter-ethnic marriage or mix-marriage in the Bidayuh communities also contributed to the decline in the usage of the Bidayuh dialects. For example, a Bidayuh man who hails from Bau who marries another Bidayuh lady from Serian, their children may end up either speaking Bahasa Melayu or English. If their parents are educated in English, there is a tendency that their children may speak English. And, if their parent are the by-product of the Bahasa Melayu medium of instruction, their children will ultimately speak Bahasa Malaysia, the language their parents used to communicate with them at home. This same case can also be applied to children of a mix-marriage couple. The children of a Bidayuh man, for example, who marries a Chinese wife may neither speak any of the Bidayuh dialect nor the Chinese dialect, but the language both mother and father speak at home. Here, it could be English or Bahasa Malaysia. This same problem could be also applied to the other Bidayuhs who marry the other races."
It is an interesting problem to be shared among the Bidayuh. For me as I'm not qualified to comments nor do I have any expertise to give my idea with strong evidences, I'll try to speak my mind out base on I'm a Salako.
To elaborate further on this matter,from the article above, it do happen and it is happening to the Salako. Let me give me myself as an example.
My wife is a Bukar Bidayuh from Serian. After 20 years of marriage, I myself as a Salako seldom talk nor communicate with my children with my mother-tongue language, that is Salako. Frankly to say, or as others will say, to loose my mother-tongue language to my wife, the Bukar. All my children spoke Bukar fluently, but Salako, they can, but not fluent. Why so, and base on the article above, me and wife can still be proud because we are not using any other language, as what I call "home communication language."
Through my own experience, this scenario happen because of the social environment that surround us, where we live and stay. In my case, I live and brought up my family in the Bukar-Sadong community, and so our "home communication language" is heavily influence by the social environment of the Bukar-Sadong Bidayuh Community. For me, the simple explanation to this scenario is we can't have two "home communication language" at any one time. We have to choose one, as to me that is base on my social environment that surround where I live.
Back to my main topic, "The diminishing language of Salako in Sarawak", the cause as I can see is the inter marriage, the social environment scenario, and the availabilities of the same community in the surrounding itself. As we see, Salako is a small community only existed in Lundu, Sarawak. During the early stage of existence in the early 1800, Salako community is an agrarian, and seldom venture far like other communities. It is fair to say that during the White Rajah era, we are call the "Land Dayaks".
When Sarawak gain independence from the British rule in 1963 within Malaysia, the scenario change. The Salako began to venture far and this lead to a more diversity of changes where we never experience before. From then on, we began to move and stay with other community, and of course this lead to the diminishing of our own language, Salako.
And in 1970, Salako are considered one of the Bidayuh community. Here, statically we loose in term of population, because in Sarawak, we will be put under the Bidayuh community. It is high time to change our own attitude as what I called "shying to talk in Salako" that lead to the diminishing of Salako language in Sarawak.
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