Establishment of Iban Language Foundation mulled

MIRI: State government is eyeing for the possibility to set up the Iban Language Foundation.

According to Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, the Ibans always take pride in the fact that their language is developing, apart from it being taught at school and available as one of the academic programmes at two teachers training institutes (ILP).

“The quest ion is what ‘development’ are we referring to as far as the language is concerned? Are we looking at development involving the language, or development within and for the language – and in what sense of development?

“I f our concern is for the development of the language, we would expect it to become contemporary in its vitality and expressiveness to described modern and contemporary ideas, concepts, conditions, situations, state of affairs and many more aspects of a contemporary civil society,” Uggah was speaking at the International Conference on Iban Language and Ethnography 2017 (ICILE 2017) yesterday.

At this juncture, Uggah – also Minister of Modernisation of Agriculture, Native Land and Regional Development – pointed out that all must realise that the status

If the development of the language is to be measured in terms of its stages of development, it is necessary to look at the measurement in terms of lexicography. Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, Deputy Chief Minister

of the Iban language in Malaysia is that of an ethnic vernacular.

As a vernacular, at best it could only be available as an indigenous language subject at school, and quite limited in usage in civil and administrative spaces, he said.

“Ifthedevelopmentofthelanguage is to be measured in terms of its stagesofdevelopment,itisnecessary to look at the measurement in terms of lexicography,” Uggah stressed.

There is the most up- to - date second- edition of Kamus ( Dictionary) Dewan Iban-Melayu published in 2015, containing 11,530 entries and 9,710 sub-entries pertaining to Iban-Bahas Malaysia inter-translation.

Themostup-to-dateIbanlanguage dictionary is the one published by Tun Jugah Foundation, which was unveiled last year by the late chief minister Datuk Amar Adenan Satem. It boasts of over 30,000 entries of headwords and derivatives, according it the status of being ‘ the dictionary of the century’.

“T h e e x p e c t at i on o f a contemporary dictionary is to have included a large repertoire of modern terminology that runs parallel to the current progress of society,” Uggah said, adding that he and Assistant Minister of Local Government Datu Dr Penguang Manggil would be looking at the possibility of establishing the Iban Language Foundation – ‘possibly making the KadazanDusun Language Foundation as the blueprint’.

The Kadazan-Dusun Foundation is a non- prof it organisation established in 1995 with the objectives of preserving, developing and promoting Kadazandusun language as well as other indigenous languages in Sabah.

Meanwhile, Uggah said the objectives lined out for the conference showed that the Ibans were still struggling in making the language accepted by all members of the community.

The conference, held at ILP SarawakCampushere,wasattended by Penguang, campus director Jamiran Salam, as well as Iban academicians and representatives of Iban-based organisations.

It was conducted by Miri Division Iban community leaders, with Pemanca Wilson Siang Lim as the organising chairman.