Why oh why?

Sometimes I get so used to reading Dusun news items translated from Malay that I forgot to react when I see that the sentence structures look more Malay than Dusun. Other times when I am in my Kadazandusun teacher-mode, I feel quite upset and wish that writers are more aware of what they are doing. But then again, no one of the current working Kadazan/Dusun people ever did learn Kadazan/Dusun grammar in school so I can't really blame them, can I?

Somehow it still bothers me. When someone decided that s/he would become a Kadazan/Dusun journalist, I believe s/he should be aware that a Kadazan/Dusun sentence begins with a verb, not a 'subject' (or whatever the elements are called). Unless of course the 'subject' is brought to the front, and followed by 'nopo nga' that functions like 'ialah/adalah' in Malay or the copular be in English. Even then it would still need to be followed by further information for the subject.

So "The people are happy" should be
Ounsikou (state verb) i(determiner) tongoulun(person.plural)

or tongoulun nopo nga ongounsikou... (the people are happy...) followed by further information

not
tongoulun(person.plural) ounsikou (happy)

The thing is, I see more and more of this careless way of writing nowadays. People don't seem to make the effort of appreciating the natural elements of the language they are using, and to me it's sad. Or could it be because boundaries between languages living side by side are getting more blurred?

(Note: This is written during one of my grumpy moods. Must be due to reading too many awkward KD sentences)

A little gift goes a long way

Today I silently thank Rev. Fr. Bruno of the Ranau Catholic Parish for having given me a Dusun bible some years ago. It was the time I started getting serious in my Bundu Dusun language analysis to aid my understanding of how the language works in order to create better teaching and learning materials for the students.(The work continues on, although there have been a lot of halts along the way.)

Many might think what has a bible got to do with this? But it actually does a lot for me. I especially realize it today when I was translating some personality quiz materials for my students to try out in the classroom. (God knows a language classroom without elements of fun in it can 'kill' the teacher and students!). Many words in the personality test, as expected, are adjectives describing people. Needless to say, it is so difficult to find the equivalents in Dusun.

I was giving up on the translation when I remembered to look in the bible. I thought if I typed in the words I was looking for in the online bible website, I'd be able to check them in the dusun bible. I took it from the shelf, and started my project. True enough, words such as 'loving, gentle and kind' are shown in many verses and I was able to check them up in the Dusun bible. Who would have thought that the word 'gentle' that I was still not able to translate after an hour was easily found?(and it's 'alamaya' by the way)

My self-lesson today: never take religious texts for granted. Even if you are not reading them to 'hear the words of God', you can certainly learn languages from them, the way the languages are used by the community .

My next target is to get my hands on the Islamic hadis translation in Dusun. I think there has to be one, because I used to hear the Friday sermon (khutbah Jumaat) being read in the Dusun radio station. It would be interesting to see how the two religious communities speaking the same language translate the language.

Thank you Fr. Bruno. You have given me a gift that I would be able to use in many areas of my life.

An ER story from a Dusun village

I was reminded of this story as I prepared my Kadazandusun teaching materials last night. This semester I have the opportunity to handle a KD class for a group of medical students who are of non-KD ethnic groups, and naturally I need to relate the lessons to some elements of medic, much that I don't have much knowledge on the field. As I like to have games as part of my classroom activities, I decided to create something called THE BEST GUESS. In this game, the students are divided into groups and each group is asked to guess the meaning of a text, supposedly a medical complaint of a patient. The group that provides the best guess gets a reward, of course.

One of the complaints was derived from a real-life story that my youngest brother witnessed last year. He accompanied my father to the Emergency Room in Ranau Hospital one evening when my father suddenly got stung by an unknown insect. As my brother waited in the waiting area while my father was being examined by the doctor, an elderly lady was wheeled in by her grandson. For some reason the lady's demeanor reminded my brother of our late grandmother, so he unashamedly eavesdropped on the lady's conversation with her grandson.

The lady looked around, decided that it was safe for her to speak in Dusun without anyone understanding her (my brother has Chinese features and he is always mistaken for one), and started telling her grandson this: "Don't you ever tell the doctor the truth about why I am not able to walk. Just tell him I fell over. Never mention at all that I got run over by a buffalo because it is so embarrassing!"

My brother found it so funny he had to go out to prevent himself from laughing out loud. It was not because of the fact that the little old lady was run over by a buffalo, but because she was so embarrassed by the fact that it happened to her, and tried so hard to cover it up.

It made for a nice guessing game...my students could never imagine that a buffalo can actually run over a person that they translate the text as : "I can't walk and I rode a buffalo...:)"

The funeral of a lady who taught me about the Dusun's death ritual

 

Rest in peace ginan Lucy Lotimboi. I attended her funeral yesterday. For the first time ever, I attended a Dusun funeral that was most peaceful. There was no mogihad (weeping ritual for the deceased) although it was obvious that her loved ones were crying quietly. I shed some tears myself. It's quite strange because I hadn't really known the lady for so long, but it must have been because I was remembering her kindness. She was my husband's aunt by marriage and I've been marriedto him for 15 years but I didn't get the chance to see that side of the family that often. But she had carved herself a place in my heart, mainly because of her kindness. Whenever we visited, she would make me feel at home. And a few months ago, she had been very kind to be willing to share with me her knowledge about some Dusun rituals- especially on death custom.

I looked at her peaceful face as I paid my last respect. Silently I thank her for everything and bade her good bye. For a few seconds, I got the sensation that she was smiling with joy as she said good bye to everyone. At the mass, the priest comforted her family members by saying that although it is inevitable that death brings grief, it should be looked at as a new life, almost a celebration that the deceased is now in heaven with her loved ones. He said that the deceased's last request to her family members, "don't cry for me" was indeed very wise. Send her off with 'joy' because she wouldn't want anyone she left behind to be sad.

Her funeral was so different from the Dusun funerals she described to me (and I've attended some like those she described too). Of course some traditions to do with death were still observed like 'not allowed to take green vegetables' because green signifies life, or that before the body was buried somebody has to keep vigil all the time, so people still play cards and drink the whole night long the night before. But there was no lingering feeling of doom like what I've experienced in some funerals before.

In the next few days till the seventh day, her family members would still observe certain traditions: no music, mongotomou (hanging green leaves outside of the house to ward off bad spirits), and on the seventh day there would be the popotongkiad (farewelling) ritual that would involve magauh (putting ash on a little plate so that when her soul is called to come over and take all her belongings, she could leave a little mark that means "I have come" on the plate of ash), and momisok (turning off light- that's when her sould would be called to come over). All these would be incorporated in the Catholic rites that she had embraced along with her family members.

Rest in peace ginan Lucy Lotimboi. You will be missed.