The fading echoes of Melanau: Why we must preserve our heritage

“Udah keman kah mey?” my grandmother utters.

I was nineteen, staring back at her with empty eyes. The Melanau language has always been so foreign to me, no matter what percentage of it is in my blood. So how was I to know that what she really meant to ask was simply whether or not I wanted a drink.

When I think of language, my mind goes into the default two; English and Malay.

However, in recent years I have realised how far along I have strayed from the mother tongue of my ancestors.

Though I carry their features through my face, there’s a sense of guilt that grows each year that I ignore their calling.

I’d like to say I know my grandparents well, but truthfully I only know so little.

In an episode of Modern Family, the famous line “Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?” delivered by Gloria became a relatable line for many bilingual speakers.

It is true, how could someone fully grasp the concept of us without learning to understand our language?

As beautiful as the Melanau language is, I never once took it in me to learn a phrase or two.

But it wasn’t entirely my fault.

There are five main dialects for the Melanau language; Mukah, Dalat, Oya, Matu and Daro. My father grew up speaking in Matu or Daro dialect, as I often heard familiar words used by him such as keman (eat).

However, growing up I would only hear those words through phone calls of him with his close family.

It’s safe to say that we were never brought up in an environment that encouraged us to learn Melanau, let alone speak in it. Which made me think; how crucial it is for us as the newer generation to preserve the heritage of our languages.

To be a bystander, witnessing the death of a language is as severe as burying the many lives of poets and writers that lived before us. How unfair would it be to simply displace their efforts of keeping their language alive.

As a young woman that has navigated her way through life in many parts of the world, it’s difficult to deny the fact that I have accustomed myself to the never-ending process of cultural assimilation.

Though I am proud of my patriotism in keeping Bahasa Melayu so close to me, I have yet to appreciate the art of preserving my father’s language. Just like most of us, we have chosen the communities we choose to integrate with and languages we deem as dominant in our lives. To simply start rekindling an interest for a language can be a vigorous jump but there are always certain steps that we can slowly take to begin that journey.

In recent years, I have found myself longing to slowly start picking up on basic sentences and conversing more casually with my Sarawakian relatives.

If I had listened to that desirous voice in my head, I would have been able to connect with them deeper through possibly documenting the knowledge learned in the form of a journal (since I love journaling) and that itself could be used for future references for the younger generations to come.

But alas, what ifs are to remain what ifs, unless worked upon. If all merely forgotten languages could be documented, recorded and made into written form, it would encourage the appreciation and preservation of not only its cultural heritage but also its identity.

Just like Bahasa Melayu, the Melanau language has a beating heart of its own with decades worth of stories that yearn to be passed down and used.

To me, not only has our generation failed to acknowledge it but the Malaysian education system also has a fair share in neglecting to prioritise our country’s native languages leading to the language barriers between generational gaps.

In efforts to preserve such culture, we must all play our roles with an open heart and mind. At the end of the day, we don’t want to wake up on a Tuesday morning realising we have lost the ability to communicate with the ones we love and mourn the death of our languages.

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