Kutai is a Malayic language spoken by 300,000 to 500,000 people. It is the native language of the Kutai people (, Kutai: ''Urang Kutai''), the indigenous ethnic group which lives along the Mahakam River in

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java, west of Sulawesi, and ea ...

, especially in North Kalimantan,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. They are the principal population in the regencies of West Kutai, Kutai Kartanegara, and East Kutai within North Kalimantan province. Kutai is part of the local Bornean Malayic languages and is closely related but distinct to

Banjar language The Banjar or Banjarese (; ) is an Austronesian language predominantly spoken by the Banjarese—an indigenous ethnic group native to Banjar regions— in the southeastern Kalimantan of Indonesia. The Banjarese language is the lingua fr ...

in South Kalimantan, Berau, also spoken in North Kalimantan and to some extent Brunei-Kedayan Malay as well. Kutai forms a dialect continuum between the two varieties and all three share similar phonology and vocabulary with each other.

Literature

Kutai for most of its history is mainly a spoken language and is mostly used as a form of poetry (''

pantun ''Pantun'' ( Jawi: ) is a Malay oral poetic form used to express intricate ideas and emotions. It is generally consists of even-numbered lines and based on ABAB rhyming schemes. The shortest consists of two lines better known as the in Mal ...

''). During the period of the

Kutai Kartanegara Sultanate Kutai is a historical region in what is now known as East Kalimantan, Indonesia on the island of Borneo and is also the name of the native ethnic group of the region (known as ''Urang Kutai'' or "the Kutai people"), numbering around 300,000 who ...

, most literature was written in Standard Malay in

Jawi script Jawi (; ace, Jawoë; Kelantan-Pattani: ''Yawi''; ) is a writing system used for writing several languages of Southeast Asia, such as Acehnese, Banjarese, Kerinci, Maguindanaon, Malay, Minangkabau, Tausūg, and Ternate. Jawi is based ...

instead of Kutai Malay.

Dialects

Kutai, as with many Malay varieties on the island, is a dialect continuum. A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a spread of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighbouring varieties differ only slightly, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties are not mutually intelligible. There are three principal dialects of Kutai Malay language; all three have little

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

with each other due to the geographical proximity of these dialects. The three main dialects are Tenggarong, Kota Bangun, and Ancalong Estuary.

References

Languages of Indonesia Agglutinative languages Malay dialects {{malayic-lang-stub Malayic languages