“Jako Kelaung” - An Iban Secret Language.
|
THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL |
|
Title :
“Jako Kelaung” - An Iban Secret Language. |
|
Author :
Teoh Boon Seong |
|
Abstract:
Iban, a Bornean language, of Sarawak, Malaysia has a form of disguised speech called Jako Kelaung (literally translated as ‘speech which is disguised/indirect/diverted’). This paper provides a description of jako kelaung of the Iban of the Rejang basin, Sarawak. Disguised speech or secret languages [e.g. baliktad (Tagalog), bahasa rahsia (Malay)], as they are sometimes called, are found in almost all languages and are usually employed by youngsters in attempting to conceal speech from adults. Jako kelaung, however, is a dying art among young Iban and is known mainly to the elderly. Secret languages, like language production errors or “spoonerisms” provide an important source of corpus-external evidence to bear upon the psychological reality of phonological descriptions about the internalized grammar of the native speakers. Secret languages are usually based on one or sometimes a combination of two general principles of insertion of a sound or sound segments in the base word or the transposition of syllables within a word. Such strategies create sound combinations or sound segments that may not exist in the regularor non-disguised form of the language. However such combinations are often modified to the phonological system/rules of the language: this provides evidence for the productivity and psychological reality of the sound system and constraints which operate within the language (Kenstowicz & Kisseberth 1979). Jako kelaung employs the strategy of transposing syllables/sound sequences or moras of the word. Data obtained from jako kelaung will be used as corpus-external evidence in supporting the description of the psychological reality of the sound system and constraints of Iban language, a western Austronesian language spoken in Sarawak, Borneo. It will be used to support the phonological representation proposed by Sagey (1986).
|
| DOI: XXXX |
|
How to cite:
Teoh Boon Seong. (1993). “Jako Kelaung” - An Iban Secret Language. The Sarawak Museum Journal, XLIV (65): 227-224 |
|
References
|
