SANDAKAN – Teacher Lenzely Salimin is on a mission to revive the Kadazandusun people’s love for their own tongue, and then to spread knowledge about this indigenous language.
Lenzely did not start not start out with this passion, but fell into it after being appointed ambassador of the Kadazandusun language by the Sabah Cultural Board, two years ago at the age of 25.
The Kadazandusun language teacher at the rural SK Temuni, Teringai Darat in Kota Marudu, near the northern tip of Sabah, was told that his role as language ambassador required him to post videos of himself teaching the language on social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok.
The Dusun man from Ranau began to realise that many people, especially those in the peninsula, were not aware that Kadazandusun people have their own language, and that it is available as an additional subject in selected public primary schools in Sabah.
“The lives of youths today revolve around social media platforms, and that is where I would like to ‘plant the seeds’ to spread interest and love for this language – by creating interesting content that would attract youths’ interest to learn the language.
“At the same time, I am using the power of social media to promote the language to people outside Sabah, many of whom do not know of the existence of the Kadazandusun language.
“I hope that social media influencers who are of Kadazandusun race would also use their platforms to promote the language in the future before the language gets lost in time,” he told Scoop.
Starting with Kadazandusun people first
The Kadazandusun people form the largest ethnic group in Sabah and Lenzely has expressed that he feels that they should be the first to love their own language. Only then can they promote it along with their culture to others.
The language is being forgotten as parents do not speak it with their children who now live and work in urban areas such as Kota Kinabalu and Kuala Lumpur where jobs pay better.
Some Kadazandusun individuals are even questioning the benefit of learning their own language and have started prioritising other languages such as English, in the hope of securing a better future.
“While I understand that there may not be a lot of advantages that would come with knowing the Kadazandusun language, I urge all of us to first think about our responsibility as Kadazandusun people,” Lenzely said, referring to the passing of the language from one generation to the next, and to promote the culture.
“I think this is vital – we need to rescue our language before it is gone. Without us realising, one word or term at a time, the Kadazandusun language is leaving our conversations.
“People don’t know what the words mean because we choose to speak Malay to converse among ourselves.”
When asked about why learning one’s native tongue is still important when Bahasa Malaysia stipulated it as the national language, he said: “When we learn about our own language, we learn the identity of our race, and we must keep this identity for the next generation so that the Kadazandusun race, culture, and language will remain for many years to come.”
Language is cultural identity
Growing up, Lenzely spoke Dusun with his grandfather. As a teenager, he felt awkward speaking Bahasa Malaysia and conversed only in Kadazandusun with his parents and his nine other siblings.
At his rural village in Kg Toboh, Ranau – an interior district in Sabah – Lenzely said most of his parents’ peers would speak Bahasa Malaysia with their children as they wanted their children to be fluent in the language to survive in school.
His friends speak Kadazandusun fluently, but will only use the language when they are back in their hometown or village, and not at their workplaces in the city.
Lenzely said he truly started to appreciate the beauty of Kadazandusun during his five-year course in the language, which he studied while at the teachers’ training campus in Tuaran.
“So when I was selected to become the ambassador of the language by the Sabah Cultural Board in 2021, I became determined to encourage more Kadazandusun people to speak their own language, and at the same time introduce the uniqueness and beauty of the language to people of other races,” he said.
The Kadazandusun language is divided into several dialects, mostly according to the area a community is living in.
Despite this, those speaking the different dialects can still converse with one another perfectly.
In 1994, former Sabah chief minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok, who was at the time an MP, urged the Education Ministry to adopt the Kadazandusun language into the formal education syllabus in Sabah.
The following year, then-chief minister Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak announced approval for the teaching of the Kadazandusun language in schools.
This was followed by tabling of the Education Bill 1995 tabled which was passed by Parliament as the Education Act 1996 the following year.
The legislation allowed for the Kadazandusun language to be taught as a Pupil’s Own Language subject in national primary and secondary schools.
In 2011, the Kadazandusun language was offered as an examination subject for the first time in SPM. A total of 315 candidates sat for it then, and today, the subject remains one of six elective language subjects offered in SPM.
Currently, there are 410 primary schools and 44 secondary schools in Sabah offering the Kadazandusun language as an elective subject, which is taught for one and a half hours per week over three sessions.
Lenzely said a lot of his students did not know the language when they entered Year 1, despite being of Kadazandusun ethnicity.
“Even though there are Kadazandusun children who have never been exposed to the language, it should not stop parents from encouraging their children to take the additional subject.
“This subject is available for us, the Kadazandusun people. If we don’t let our children take the subject and learn the language, then who will?” – December 3, 2023