Kutai Language
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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 () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...
, especially in
East Kalimantan East Kalimantan (Indonesian language, Indonesian: ) is a Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia. Its territory comprises the eastern portion of Borneo/Kalimantan. It had a population of about 3.03 million at the 2010 census (within the cu ...
,
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
. They are the principal population in the regencies of West Kutai,
Kutai Kartanegara Kutai Kartanegara Regency (abbreviated as ''Kukar'') is a Regency (Indonesia), regency of East Kalimantan Province, Indonesia. It has a land area of 27,891.13 km2 and a water area of 4,097 km2, geographically located between 1°18′4 ...
, and East Kutai within East Kalimantan province. Kutai is part of the local Bornean Malayic languages and is closely related to but distinct from the
Banjar language The Banjar or Banjarese (; , Jawi: ) is an Austronesian language of the Malayic branch predominantly spoken by the Banjarese—an indigenous ethnic group native to  Banjar regions— in the southeastern Kalimantan of Indonesia. The Banja ...
in
South Kalimantan South Kalimantan () is a Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia. It is the second most populous province on the island of Kalimantan, the Indonesian territory of the island of Borneo after West Kalimantan. The provincial capital was Banjar ...
, 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.


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 partial
mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intelli ...
with each other due to the geographical proximity of these dialects. The three main dialects are Tenggarong (vkt), Kota Bangun (mqg), and Muara Ancalong (currently does not have its own
ISO 639-3 ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for ...
code). Despite being commonly viewed as two dialects of the same language, ''
Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...
'' classifies Tenggarong and Kota Bangun varieties separately. According to them, Tenggarong Kutai belongs to the Greater Riau-Johoric branch (closer to traditional Malayic languages around
South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by South China, in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan island, Taiwan and northwestern Philippines (mainly Luz ...
and the
Strait of Malacca The Strait of Malacca is a narrow stretch of water, long and from wide, between the Malay Peninsula to the northeast and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the southwest, connecting the Andaman Sea (Indian Ocean) and the South China Sea (Pa ...
), while Kota Bangun Kutai belongs to the East Borneo Malay (closer to Banjarese).


Phonology

Source: * , , and have lowered allophones , , and in final closed syllables.


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 Malayic oral poetic form used to express intricate ideas and emotions. It generally consists of an even number of lines and is based on ABAB rhyming schemes. The shortest consists of two lines, known as the in Mal ...
''). During the period of the
Kutai Kartanegara Sultanate Kutai is a historical region in what is now the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. The region shares its name with the Ethnic groups of Indonesia, native ethnic group of the region (known as 'the Kutai people'), wi ...
, most literature was written in
Standard Malay Malaysian Malay () or Malaysian ()endonymically known as Standard Malay () or simply Malay (, abbreviated to BM)is a standardized form of the Malay language used in Malaysia and also used in Singapore and Brunei (as opposed to the variety u ...
in
Jawi script Jawi (; ; ; ) is a writing system used for writing several languages of Southeast Asia, such as Acehnese, Banjarese, Betawi, Magindanao, Malay, Mëranaw, Minangkabau, Tausūg, Ternate and many other languages in Southeast Asia. Jawi ...
instead of Kutai Malay.


References


Sources

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