Saturday June 9, 2012
SIBU: Unesco is working to preserve the Kelabit and Bidayuh languages in Sarawak.State Welfare, Women and Family Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah said the organisation was undertaking the two projects under its “Endangered Languages” programme.
The two languages were selected because they belonged to minority indigenous communities.
“Not many Bidayuh and Kelabit speak their language in its pure form these days.
“This is especially so in inter-racial marriages where the families opt to speak Bahasa Malaysia or English at home,” she told reporters after opening the National Early Childhood Intervention Conference here, last night.
Fatimah said other minority native groups in the state also risked losing their languages if no effort was taken to preserve and promote them.
She said many of the Kelabit had migrated to towns or urban areas and, in their new environment, the tendency was for them to speak only a little of the original language.
She noted that the Dayak Bidayuh National Association (DBNA) in Kampung Bunuk, Kuching, was taking concrete steps to preserve the Bidayuh language by getting trained teachers to teach preschoolers to write and speak in the language at a nursery.
The Unesco website states that about half of more than the 6,000 languages spoken today across the globe will disappear by the end of this century if nothing is done to protect them.
Bernama
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