Where Goes....Kadazandusun?

By Aki Gintolu
I recently attended Kadazandusun Colloquium organized by the Ministry of Education and Sabah Education Department in collaboration with some Kadazandusun Language body in Sabah. I was thrilled, at first, to discover that the Kadazandusun language is being taken into a new height, a new development which I think would somehow lead this language into the threshold of a developed language that can be used, both written and oral, in a modern world.
When the last presenter stood up and started to present his views about the Kadazandusun language which was being taught in school as being the language that is least used by the Kadazandusun community at large, I was dumbstruck.
He alleged that the BUNDULIWAN dialect which become the basis of the Kadazandusun language is non-existence, I was even more appalled. He claimed that the only language that is acceptable to the majority of the Kadazandusun people is the dialect that his association is championing. He interspersed his presentation by distinctly outlining the differences in the KADAZAN and DUSUN and that he claimed these two cannot be formed together to form one word Kadazandusun.
He also alleged that the word Kadazandusun were coined by just two person, (and in this I assumed he refers to Joseph Pairin Kitingan, KDCA President and the late Mark Koding who was then the USDA President in 1994) when Kadazandusun was officially accepted as the term used to refer to the Kadazandusun language which will be taught in school in stages beginning that year. He said it was done in haste without any consultation with the various Kadazandusun leaders.
To make things look more uglier, he began by insulting the wisdom of choosing the BUNDULIWAN dialect as the basis to develop the Kadazandusun language; he went on to insult those who made the decision to teach Kadazandusun language in school. He went on and on and on, speaking a lot of whatnots…. Wilfred Tangau who was one of the participant, and the following day, chaired the forum couldn’t take it anymore and stood up and asked the facilitator to stop the presenter from speaking further.
The whole issue was, he wanted the Education department to review the use of BUNDULIWAN as the basis to develop a Kadazandusun language that will be taught in school; and he wanted the KADAZAN language, which is infact the TANGAA (or TANGARA) dialect to replace the BUNDULIWAN.
He based this on his assumption that the Kadazan language or Tangaa for that matter, has been on Radio Sabah since 1954; and that every Kadazan and Dusun in Sabah understand and speak the dialect whether you are in Kota Kinabalu, Tuaran, Kota Belud, Ranau, Keningau, Kota Marudu, Kudat, Sandakan or wherever you are in Sabah; and that TANGAA is the only dialect that is more acceptable, and a sort of lingua franca of the Kadazandusun community.
In the next posting, I would be discussing the issue of how BUNDULIWAN came to be accepted, who were involved and how was the signature of Joseph Pairin Kitingan and Mark Koding ended up on the Memorundum Of Declaration to adopt BUNDULIWAN as the base language and KADAZANDUSUN as the collective term to refer to the language. But for now, let us hear your views on the topics I mentioned above.