Finally!

Now that its done...its the execution that's gotta come..

Poster

Jason Wong Zhin-Ming

1102701493

"Dying Language"

Artist Statement

The Kadazandusun language, is the mother tongue of the Kadazandusun. In most wet markets, that’s where the language are also spoken to communicate amongst themselves – the consumers and the sellers. Although the language is widely known by the older generation of the Kadazandusun community, different areas of Sabah have different dialects of the language and it may be difficult for the one end of the chain to communicate to the other. It is slowly dying especially among the young generations, they don’t speak it at all.

Teaser

This is a very simple teaser video that I made...no worries..its just less than 20secs..

Ideas of prototype

Well...this is my version of prototypes..so no one say that its wrong or how it should look like..but anyway...here it is..


#idea_1

#idea_2

#idea_3

 

surveys

1. What is your gender?
2. What is your age?
3. What is your race? 
4. Can you speak Kadazan?
5. How frequent do you use the Kadazan language in daily communication?
6. Does your Kadazan relatives, grandma/pa, parents can speak Kadazan?
7. As a Kadazan, do you think that the language is important to us and it should be pass down to the next generation? 
 8. Would you like it if the Kadazan language can be learned digitally?
9. Do you think there's something unique about the language that should be preserved? eg. the tone, humor, etc? 

• Q8: most want it to be digital..

• ...about Q9..re:The tone, kadazan have a unique way of talking that it differs them from normal sabahan/malaysian

...this makes me feel like want to change the direction of the issue...maybe I will emphasize the tone of the language?!

My Raya week

Okay...this is a bit off topic but anyways...it was Raya Week!
And I flew back to Kota Kinabalu..so far for this year I did went to two open house...one that's a family friend to my whole mom's side families and another one is my cousin's house.

My observation was much clear on this one. All youngsters including myself and my brothers and cousins..we spoke Malay(baku)+English. No one was speaking a single phrase of Kadazan..Haha

My findings

What is the Kadazandusun language

The Kadazandusun language is a language that is spoken in the state of Sabah in the north of Borneo in Malaysia, mostly by the indigenous race over there in which the people of the race are called the Kadazans and the Dusuns (Simon). It is a member of the North Bornean branch of the Malayo-Polynesian language family, also one of the Austronesian language family. Kadazandusun refers to the form of language standardised by the Kadazandusun Cultural Association of Sabah, which is based on the Bundu-liwan dialect spoken in Bundu and Liwan, Sabah. The alphabets used in the language and its tone is pretty much similar to English alphabets.

Simon, Ager. "Kadazandusun language, alphabets and pronounciations." Omniglot: The online encyclopedia of writing systems & languages. Omniglot. Web. 31 july 2013.

A brief beginnings of the Kadazandusun

According to my online research (Herman, 2006), it is unclear from where the language originated. There is a legend, and one is that the Kadazan language, and maybe the Kadazan people, has its roots in the migration from the Southern China. Ancient Sabahans spoke their languages and dialects without much bothering as to their origins. Life in the valleys of north Borneo are mostly centered about the rice plantations and the village communities. Kadazans mainly inhabited flat valleys and deltas, an area where most are paddy field farms, however, the Dusuns traditionally inhabited the hilly regions where they cultivated ‘hill rice’.

The first Kadazandusuns to receive some form of school were the Papar, Kuala Penyu and the Penampang Kadazans. In early 1880’s, education was interrupted during the wars but resumed until the formation of Malaysia in 1963. Their schools were known as the ‘Native Voluntary Schools’ and appealed to the local Kadazan and Dusun because they opted to teach the rural folks initially through their local Kadazan or Dusun language before gradually shifting to English in the third and fourth year (Reid ,1997).

During the post-war years, the Kadazandusun language underwent some acceptance in the mass media usage; In 1953, Sabah’s first English newspaper ‘The Sabah Times’ had introduced a Kadazandusun section, and this remains the largest Kadazandusun newspaper section to this day. Since 1955, Radio Sabah followed suite, together with some other local publications. For more than half a century the language improved and developed more over the years due to its popularity.

After North Borneo (Sabah) joined Malaya in 1963 to form Malaysia, the mother-tongue language went into a great decline. Emphasis was now on the national language, Bahasa Malayu, which is a language of the Malays. For the sake of social and economic development as well as the integration into the fast-growing Malaysian culture, Kadazandusun parents had begun to allow the use of the Malay language in the home, hence not using the mother tongue language in the home.

In the early 1980’s, there were many 'broken' Kadazan and Dusun songs that broke into the music industry but had added further damage to the situation. Their fun and catchy tunes influenced the generation back then against original mother-tongue used by many Kadazandusun speakers themselves.

What has been done to conserve the language and its problems

There some schools that still teaches in the language itself, but only few; mainly in the rural areas of Sabah (Herman, 2006). There are even books on the language that are being sold today but those books are just phrasebooks four tourist and are in limited supply. On the contrary, even though there are some communities that still produce native speakers; they continue to speak their native tongue at home, even amongst siblings, and in their community. But only few make are able to speak the language.when they come into contact with other Kadazandusun, For instance, in a wet market, the sellers there are mostly the older generations of kadazandusun, hard for the youngsters to communicate to due to the language barrier; and it is not always because their languages and dialects differ as in most areas the Kadazandusun themselves like to view their language as underappreciated. For them, parents are emphasizing the Malay language more than their mother tongue on their children just so that they could have better chances in life when it comes to being socially contact with any Malay speakers out there.

Samples of greetings in the language

Kadazan	English translation
Oi/Halo	Hello
Kopivosian doid diau	Hello to you
Kopivosian doungusuvab	Good morning
Kopivosian doungadau	Good afternoon
Kopivosian minsosodop	Good evening
Kopivosian doungotuvong	Good night
Kotobian Toun Vagu	Happy new year
Ingkuo no?	How are you?
Ingkuo no ngaavi?	How are things?
Miaga tomoimo	As usual

*PS: There's more from this book below:

Source:  

J. Disimon, Sylvester. A Pocket Trilingual Phrase Book: English-Kadazan-Malay. 1st ed. Kota Kinabalu: A.D ENTERPRISE, 2007. 1-290. Print.

 Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GbtNGzE0LE