Swedish linguists discover Jedek language in Kelantan

PETALING JAYA: Linguists from a Swedish university have stumbled upon a previously unknown language spoken by only 280 people in a rural area of Kelantan while doing research on another language.

The discovery of the Jedek language was made by researchers of the Lund University while they were studying the Jahai language in the Sungai Rual area near Jeli.

“Documentation of endangered minority languages such as Jedek is important, as it provides new insight into human cognition and culture,” said Joanne Yager, a doctoral student at Lund University in a press release on EurekAlert.

In the release, Jedek is described as an Aslian variety within the Austroasiatic language family. It is spoken by 280 people who are settled hunter-gatherers.

“Jedek is not a language spoken by an unknown tribe in the jungle, as you would perhaps imagine, but in a village previously studied by anthropologists.

“As linguists, we had different questions and found something the anthropologists missed,” said Niclas Burenhult, Associate Professor of General Linguistics at Lund University, who collected the first linguistic material from Jedek speakers.

The researchers were there for a language documentation project called Tongues of the Semang, where they visited several villages to collect language data from different groups who speak Aslian languages.

“We realised a large part of the village spoke another language. They used words, phonemes and grammatical structures not used in Jahai.

“Some of these words suggested a link with other Aslian languages spoken far away in other parts of the Malay peninsula,” said Yager.

The release said the community in which Jedek is spoken is more gender-equal than Western societies. There is almost no interpersonal violence, they consciously encourage their children not to compete and there are no laws or courts.

It added that there is a rich vocabulary of words to describe exchanging and sharing in Jedek.

“There are so many ways to be human, but all too often our own modern and mainly urban societies are used as the yardstick for what is universally human.

“We have so much to learn, not least about ourselves, from the largely undocumented and endangered linguistic and cultural riches that are out there,” said Burenhult.