Page:A SEA Dyak Dictionary in alphabetical parts, with examples and quotations shewing the use and meaning of words.pdf/7

VII Further, we should not omit to notice the growing importance of the language in the country further north, beyond H H. The Rajah’s territory.

The British North Borneo Company employs a number of Sea Dyaks as armed police. There are many engaged in seeking jungle produce, in petty trading, or in cooley work, and, year by year, there would appear to be a steady increase in the number of Sea Dyaks who seek their fortunes in the Company’s territory.

The Sea Dyaks possess no knowledge of writing, so their language bias necessarily existed as an oral language.

When we reflect that Europeans have been in the country for upwards of fifty years, we may well feel surprised that so little has been done to familiarise both the natives and ourselves with this language by means of writing and printed books.

Previous to this Dictionary there has been produced only one work of the sort, entitled “A Brief Dictionary of the Sea Dyak Language.” The other printed works can be counted almost upon the fingers of one hand, and their value is, in our opinion, much discounted by the fact that they clothe foreign ideas, thoughts, customs, and speech with mere Dyak words (of course used grammatically), which renders them useful only to Dyaks who have first of all been educated up to them, and of little use to those Europeans employed in this country who desire to con­struct genuine Dyak sentences understood by the common people. In this work it will be noticed that we have very generally erred upon the other side, and, at the expense of the English language, have tried to express in our examples native ideas, thoughts, customs and speech.

For their valuable assistance so kindly given us in preparing this work for publication, we have to thank Jantong of Temelan (who probably possesses a greater knowledge of the peculiarities of the language than any other Dyak living), Mt. A. F. Cheyne of Kalaka, the Rev’d E. H. Gomes, B. A., of Banting (whose criticisms and suggestions proved to be of the greatest possible use) and the Right Reverend G. F. Hose, D. D., Bishop ot Singapore and Sarawak.

Simanggang, 1900.