Lower Baram Varieties of Brunei and Sarawak: Belait, Ba'ong, Miraik and Tutong

Language	Belait, Ba’ong, Mirak, Tutong
Depositor	Holly Drayton
Affiliation	University Brunei Darussalam, Newcastle University
Location	Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia
Collection ID	0662
Grant ID	SG0715
Funding Body	ELDP, The Leverhulme Trust, Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing page handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/3cedd0c8-64b4-5768-9e38-5552927e2f1g

 

 Summary of the collection

 English: This deposit provides a documentary corpus of audio-visual texts in the Lower Baram varieties, Belait, Ba’ong, Miraik and Tutong, funded by an ELDP small grant in 2022-2023, with additional fieldwork carried out in 2024 supported by the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research and the Leverhulme Trust. The deposited material includes a series of sociolinguistic interviews on language use and attitues; a series of language teaching lessons; elicited responses to picture and video stimuli; a series of parallel storyboard narratives using the Jackal and Crow and Chore Girl stimuli; a range of cultural and historical narratives; medicinal plant description; multi-speaker conversational recordings and musical demonstration. Information about each session is provided in English and Malay.

Bahasa Melayu: Deposit ini menyediakan korpus dokumentari teks audio-visual dalam bahasa Lower Baram, Belait, Ba’ong, Miraik dan Tutong, yang dibiayai oleh ELDP small grant pada 2022-2023, dengan fieldwork tambahan yang dijalankan pada 2024 disokong oleh Firebird Foundation for Anthropological research dan Leverhulme Trust.

 

Group represented

English: This deposit represents speakers of several mutually-intelligible Lower Baram language varieties spoken in Brunei and Sarawak, north Borneo. These groups are scattered across a number of discontinuous areas around Brunei (Belait district and Tutong district), and the city of Miri in Malaysian Sarawak and, as such, do not retain a central location. The relationships between these groups is unclear, and somewhat controversial. Particularly in terms of linguistic affinities, it is contested which variety represents the ‘main’ language, and which are ‘sub-dialects’. Although speakers from each group agree that the languages are ‘the same’, each group posits their variety as the ‘main’ language. Therefore, in this documentation I leave aside the issue of sub-varieties or dialects and I aim to characterise each variety according the preferences of its speakers.

Kumpulan Diwakili

Bahasa Melayu: Deposit ini mewakili penutur beberapa ragam bahasa Baram Hilir yang saling boleh difahami yang dituturkan di Brunei dan Sarawak, Borneo utara. Kumpulan ini tersebar di beberapa kawasan terputus di sekitar Brunei (daerah Belait dan daerah Tutong), dan bandar Miri di Malaysia Sarawak dan, oleh itu, tidak mengekalkan lokasi pusat. Hubungan antara kumpulan ini tidak jelas, dan agak kontroversi. Khususnya dari segi pertalian linguistik, dipertikaikan ragam mana yang mewakili bahasa ‘utama’, dan yang mana ‘subdialek’. Walaupun penutur dari setiap kumpulan bersetuju bahawa bahasa itu ‘sama’, setiap kumpulan meletakkan ragam mereka sebagai bahasa ‘utama’. Oleh itu, dalam dokumentasi ini saya mengetepikan isu subvarieti atau dialek dan saya berhasrat untuk mencirikan setiap varieti mengikut keutamaan penuturnya.

Ragam bahasa ini sangat terancam. Terdapat kurang daripada 100 penutur Belait di Brunei dan segelintir penutur Ba’ong di kampung Mungkom, Brunei. Terdapat juga beberapa ratus penutur varieti Miraik, berpusat di sekitar Miri di Sarawak Malaysia.

Golongan ini kini telah memeluk Islam dan mengenal pasti sebagai Melayu,. Ini bermakna pengetahuan tentang kepercayaan dan amalan budaya pra-Islam hanya diingati oleh generasi tertua, dan amalan tradisi sebahagian besarnya telah ditinggalkan. Dokumentasi ini termasuk penceramah daripada beberapa jenis: Kuala Balai, Labi, Ba’ong, Tutong(Kiudang), dan Miraik, yang dituturkan merentasi sempadan di Sarawak.

 

Language information

English: The exact nature of the relationships between different mutually-intelligible language varieties in the Lower Baram region is controversial. The Lower Baram subgroup includes around 8 closely-related varieties spoken in Brunei and Sarawak. Different groups have different understandings of which languages are sub dialects of others. For example, recordings beg010 and beg011 included in this collection present the perspectives of two Belait speakers who explain that Belait is the ‘main’ language, with sub dialects spoken across the border in Sarawak. Conversely, speakers of other varieties, including Ba’ong in Kiudang and the Miraik in Sarawak, do not consider themselves to speak a variety of Belait. Rather, they consider Belait to be another dialect of their language. Despite these differences, speakers of the Lower Baram varieties generally agree that they speak varieties of ‘the same language’.

Further research is required to better understand how these varieties are related. According to speakers involved in this documentation project, the Belait people originally lived along the Tinjar river in Sarawak. However, conflict with another ethnic group forced the Belaits to migrate downriver, settling in the villages of Kuala Balai and Labi in Brunei around the beginning of the 20th century. Subsequent nation-building initiatives by the Bruneian state has driven a process of ‘Islamicization, Malayicization or Bruneization’ which has encouraged speakers to adopt the national Islamic Brunei-Malay identity, language and religious culture, leading to the current situation where Belait is only spoken by fewer than 100 in Brunei of the oldest generations and intergenerational transmission has ceased. A similar situation is found over the border in Malaysian Sarawak, where there are several hundred speakers of Miraik, clustered around the city of Miri.

Maklumat Bahasa

Bahasa Melayu: Sifat sebenar perhubungan antara pelbagai ragam bahasa yang saling boleh difahami di rantau Baram Hilir adalah kontroversi. Subkumpulan Baram Bawah merangkumi sekitar 8 jenis yang berkait rapat yang dituturkan di Brunei dan Sarawak. Kumpulan yang berbeza mempunyai pemahaman yang berbeza tentang bahasa mana yang merupakan sub dialek orang lain. Sebagai contoh, rakaman beg010 dan beg011 yang disertakan dalam koleksi ini memaparkan perspektif dua penutur Belait yang menjelaskan bahawa Belait adalah bahasa ‘utama’, dengan sub dialek yang dituturkan merentasi sempadan di Sarawak. Sebaliknya, penutur varieti lain, termasuk Ba’ong di Kiudang dan Miraik di Sarawak, tidak menganggap diri mereka bercakap pelbagai Belait. Sebaliknya, mereka menganggap Belait sebagai dialek lain dalam bahasa mereka. Walaupun terdapat perbezaan ini, penutur varieti Baram Bawah umumnya bersetuju bahawa mereka menuturkan variasi ‘bahasa yang sama.’

Penyelidikan lanjut diperlukan untuk lebih memahami bagaimana varieti ini berkaitan. Menurut penceramah yang terlibat dalam projek dokumentasi ini, orang Belait pada asalnya tinggal di sepanjang sungai Tinjar di Sarawak. Walau bagaimanapun, konflik dengan kumpulan etnik lain memaksa orang Belait untuk berhijrah ke hilir sungai, menetap di kampung Kuala Balai dan Labi di Brunei sekitar awal abad ke-20. Inisiatif pembinaan negara bangsa berikutnya oleh negara Brunei telah memacu proses ‘Islamicization, Malayicization atau Bruneization’ yang telah menggalakkan penceramah untuk mengamalkan identiti, bahasa dan budaya agama Islam Brunei-Melayu, membawa kepada keadaan semasa di mana Belait hanya dituturkan oleh kurang daripada 100 orang di Brunei daripada generasi tertua dan transmisi antara generasi telah terhenti. Situasi yang sama ditemui di sempadan di Malaysia Sarawak, di mana terdapat beberapa ratus penutur Miraik, berkumpul di sekitar bandar Miri.

 

References / Rujukan

Abdullah, Noor Alifah (2004). Struktur Bahasa Belait. Brunei Darussalam: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka Brunei, Kementerian Kebudayaan, Belia dan Sukan.

Clynes, Adrian (2005). “Belait”. In: The Austronesian Languages of Asia and Madagascar. 1st Edition. Routledge, pp. 429–455.

Drayton, Holly (2025). “The Symmetry of Belait Voice Alternations in Narrative Discourse: Properties of the Subject”, JSEALS ,18 (3), Papers from the 33rd Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (2024), https://hdl.handle.net/10524/52539.

Drayton, Holly (to appear). “Subjecthood and Voice Choice in Belait”.

Drayton, Holly (to appear). “Telicity and Voice in the Lower Baram varieties of north Borneo”.

Tunggal, Ramlee (2005). Struktur Bahasa Tutong. Brunei Darussalam: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka Brunei, Kementerian Kebudayaan, Belia dan Sukan

 

Collection history

English: Data included in this collection has been recorded during two periods. In 2022 I began interviewing speakers in Brunei, and recorded the first batch of audio and audio-visual files. I returned to Brunei and Malaysian Sarawak in 2024 to continue the documentation. I will be gathering more data and further documenting the valuable linguistic and cultural knowledge of Belait speakers until 2025, so more updates will be added throughout the next year.

Sejarah Koleksi

Bahasa Melayu: Data yang termasuk dalam koleksi ini telah direkodkan dalam dua tempoh. Pada tahun 2022 saya mula menemu bual penceramah di Brunei, dan merakam kumpulan pertama fail audio dan audio-visual. Saya kembali ke Brunei dan Malaysia Sarawak pada 2024 untuk meneruskan dokumentasi. Saya akan mengumpul lebih banyak data dan seterusnya mendokumentasikan pengetahuan linguistik dan budaya yang berharga penutur Belait sehingga 2025, jadi lebih banyak kemas kini akan ditambah sepanjang tahun hadapan.

 

Collection contents

• Elicitation and Language Learning/Teaching:
  14.5 hours of audio and audio-visual recorded language learning and elicitation sessions
• Language Vitality:
  8 detailed sociolinguistic interviews on language use and language attitudes
  A report on the current vitality status of Belait in Brunei
• Response to Stimuli:
  2.25 hrs of  parallel narratives collected using the Jackal and Crow storyboard and the Choregirl storyboard
  1.5 hrs of picture descriptions based on the artwork of Bruneian artist, Maziyah Yussof
  2.5 hrs Responses to Information Structure elicitation stimuli
  22 mins Responses to Cut and Break videos
• Spontaneous Language production:
  2.5 hrs Narratives (History, Descriptions of cultural practices relating to marriage, Pre-Islamic beliefs, Personal histories)
  1.5 hours of audio-visual narration and description during a nature walk and medicinal herb garden in Tutong district
  0.25 hrs of Musical demonstration
  6 hrs Multi-speaker conversation

Ringkasan Koleksi

Acknowledgement and citation

English: A special thank you to Noor Alifah Abdullah for the many hours spent teaching me Belait. Thanks also to Dr Yabit Alas for help in getting the documentation project running. Thanks to Hazwani Husli for help arranging meetings, and working on elan files.

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:

Drayton, Holly. 2022. Lower Baram Varieties of Brunei and Sarawak: Belait, Ba’ong, Miraik and Tutong. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/4cede0p9-32c4-5967-9e38-5882928e2g3f. Accessed on [insert date here].

Penghargaan dan Petikan

Bahasa Melayu: Ucapan terima kasih khas kepada Noor Alifah Abdullah kerana banyak menghabiskan masa mengajar saya Belait. Terima kasih juga kepada Dr Yabit Alas kerana membantu dalam menjalankan projek dokumentasi. Terima kasih kepada Hazwani Husli kerana membantu mengatur mesyuarat, dan menguruskan fail elan.

Untuk merujuk kepada mana-mana data daripada koleksi, sila petik seperti berikut:

Drayton, Holly. 2022. A documentation of Belait, an Austronesian language of Brunei. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/4cede0p9-32c4-5967-9e38-5882928e2g3f. Diakses pada [masukkan tarikh di sini].