The relevance of Salako for Proto-Malayic and for Old Malay epigraphy

Abstract

Salako is spoken in the Lundu district of Sarawak's First Division and in three discontinuous areas in Kabupaten Sambas in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Despite the persistent belief of some scholars that Salako is a Land Dayak isolect, it belongs to the Malayic-Dayak linguistic subgroup, as Hudson (1970) already pointed out, and is closely related to Kendayan and Belangin (both spoken in Kabupaten Pontianak). These three dialects are mutually intelligible, and I call them West Malayic Dayak to distin guish them from Iban, Mualang and other Ibanic isolects of the Malayic Dayak subgroup, which are spoken east of the Land Dayak linguistic area (see map 42 in Wurm and Hattori 1981-3). I use Hudson's term 'isolect' as it is connotationally neutral with respect to the distinction between language and dialect (cf. Hudson 1967). A phonological outline of Salako has appeared earlier (Adelaar 1991). Malayic Dayak isolects are important for the history of the Malayic linguistic subgroup, as they have developed in relative isolation from other Malayic isolects. They have undergone to a much smaller degree the long standing and intensive influence from lingua franca varieties of Malay such as Standard Malay and Bazaar Malay, which have also brought with them considerable lexical influence from Indian languages, Javanese, Arabic, Persian and European languages. West Malayic Dayak is of particular interest for the linguistic history of the Malayic subgroup, as on