Kadazan May Cease to be a Native Language

If the Kadazan people are not careful, Kadazan may become a heritage language instead of remaining a native language.

What is a heritage language?

Wikipedia provides the definition as follows:
"A heritage language is a minority language learnt by its speakers at home as children, but never fully developed, because speakers grow up with a dominant language, in which they become more competent."

In the abstract to "Heritage languages and their speakers: Opportunities and challenges for linguistic", 2013, by Benmamoun E, Montrul S, Polinsky M, this is stated of native speakers:

"Native speaker competence is typically the result of normal first language acquisition in an environment where the native language is dominant in various contexts, and learners have extensive and continuous exposure to it and opportunities to use it."

In the past, the Kadazan Language was in no danger of disappearing because everyone was communicating in Kadazan. Every Kadazan was a native speaker of Kadazan.

In Penampang, for example, Kadazans spoke to almost everyone in Kadazan so much so that the Chinese shopkeepers in Donggongon could understand and spoke fluent Kadazan. Some of the shopkeepers had married Kadazan wives.

With the implementation of Malay as the medium of instruction in schools, Kadazan parents started to talk to their children in Malay - some in broken Malay - which resulted in the following generations of Kadazans who could neither understand nor speak Kadazan or if they could, to a limited extent. A minority continued to talk to their children in Kadazan. Even these sometimes mixed Kadazan and Malay when talking to their children. There was a danger of language shift!

The problem became so acute that alarms bells started ringing. Many Kadazan leaders became very worried. Some took every opportunity to urge parents to talk to their children in Kadazan.

But the problem was that this particular generation of parents could neither speak nor understand Kadazan. They could not do much about it. They drifted along hopelessly. Fortunately for some families, the grandparents who spoke Kadazan were still around.

But some grandparents had been influenced into speaking in Malay to their grandchildren or a mixture of Kadazan-Malay. Many of these kids ended up not being able to speak proper Kadazan or proper Malay having been exposed to a mixture of Malay and Kadazan. Language attrition from one generation to the next started to come about.

The situation seemed to deteriorate from bad to worse. It appeared that the Kadazan people could not maintain their language. It was then that some Kadazan leaders, worried that the language may die out, appealed to the government to allow the teaching of Kadazan in schools as a "Pupil Own Language". It took time for this to be approved. But when approval was given, it was not Kadazan that was agreed to be used as the language medium but Bundu-Liwan, the language spoken by the majority of natives in the land. Not every primary school offers the Kadazandusun subject. Unfortunately!

It is learned that Kadazan can be used as the medium in schools located in areas that are predominantly Kadazan. If so, it would appear that some flexibility is allowed. But Kadazandusun graduates teachers learned Bundu-Liwan, not Kadazan.

From my present encounters with both young adult Kadazans and children, there is little hope that the generation of young Kadazan not exposed to Kadazan-speaking family environment will make any significant improvement in their usage of Kadazan. However, there is hope among children due to two factors. Firstly, the teaching of Kadazandusun in some primary schools and, secondly, more parents, supported by grandparents, now talk to their children in Kadazan. There is still hope for the future.

If the language attrition is not stemmed, the number Kadazan native speakers may decrease. The language may end up as a heritage language, spoken by a few. Kadazan (or Bundu-Liwan for that matter) need to become one of the dominant languages if it is to survive.

The worse-case scenario is that the language may become a dead language. This will come about if no Kadazan can speak it or none of them is fluent in it. There appears to be a slim possibility of this happening because of the language revival initiatives (the language is taught in schools and awareness within the community). But there may still be Kadazan language loss on an personal or familial level. It depends very much on Kadazan families and the community itself.

It is still too early to make any conclusion as to the success of the initiative to teach Kadazandusun in some primary schools.

The most effective way of preserving the language is to speak Kadazan within the family and community surroundings. The very young Kadazans can save the language provided they have support all the way.