Ya’ahoŵu! Li Niha Is Cool but Is in Danger

YA’AHOŴU! LI NIHA IS COOL BUT IS IN DANGER Ingatan Gulö [email protected] STBA Teknokrat - Lampung 1. Introduction Located in the west part of Indonesia is Nias Island whose inhabitants speak Li Niha or literally ‘the language of the people’. Because the language is originally and mainly spoken in the island, it is called bahasa Nias ‘Nias language’ in Indonesian. The word Ya’ahoŵu above is a greeting expressed in Li Niha when its native speakers meet each other. It idiomatically means good morning, good evening, hi, or hello, but basically it is a kind of prayer or a sincere wish that the one being greeted will continue to do greater and grow healthier from the moment on. Nias itself consists of five dialects namely South, West, North, Gunungsitoli, and Middle dialects (Marulafau, 2004: 2; Ndruru, 2007: 3). As some of its native speakers moved out of the island, the language is now spoken not only in the island but also in other nearby towns or cities such as Sibolga, Medan, Pekanbaru, and in other places where Nias people live in groups. The data presented in this article are mostly from Gunungsitoli dialect. It is a well-known dialect as it is widely used in formal communications, printed materials, songs, and daily interactions. The issues discussed, thus, are understandable by the other speakers and relevant to the principles of their dialects. 2. Background and Method The Nias greeting Ya’ahoŵu was made as the opening in the title as this paper aims to introduce the language and its interesting features to the readers. This language enriches vernacular languages known and spoken in Indonesia. In reality, the existence of the language is being threatened by various factors. What makes this worse is that scientific research on the language has not been done in details due to many obstacles. These general issues have underlined the reason for conducting this research and pose linguistic findings about the language. 292

This study was designed to be conducted qualitatively as language is central to qualitative research (Liamputtong, 2008: 21). It is a descriptive-analytical research that makes use of available facts or information to analyze and to make a critical evaluation (Kothari, 2004: 110; Stake, 2010: 19, 20). Most of the data presented are acceptable in all dialects of Li Niha and are easily understood by the speakers of each. Most of all, the issues discussed are relevant to all dialects as they are common issues applicable to Li Niha in general. 3. Discussion This part is divided into two sub points. Part one presents the data that show how Li Niha can be claimed ‘cool’ as in the title. Part two covers the explanations why the language is in danger. 3.1 What Is Cool about Li Niha? First thing to be proud of about Nias is that it is a language with no consonants in the ends of its syllables. The proverbs below illustrate the fact that Nias is an open-syllable language. (1) Aboto leŵuö ba ŵamalo’o balö (La’ija, 1971: 2). A bamboo could split during the cutting process. (2) Hulö falukha zikhö, faoma fa’ago baŵa (Hammerle, 2012: 233). Just like ants, they greet each other when they meet. As it is obvious in the data above, all words end in vowels. The syllabifications of falukha ‘meet’ and zikhö (mutated form of unmutated sikhö) ‘ants’ are fa-lu-kha and zi-khö; not fa-luk-ha and zikhö. Why is this cool? This is a rare phenomenon in languages. Linguistic behavior such as disallowing consonants to be in the ends of syllables is hardly found except for certain languages like Maori (Bauer, 2001). Another linguistic feature of Li Niha which should be introduced here is that it has some interesting phonemes which are rarely found in languages of the world. Among those phonemes are voiced bilabial fricative // realized by letter ŵ in oŵulo ‘gather’ in sentence (3) and voiced bilabial trill // represented by the group of letters m and b found in molombase ‘to rest’ in sentence (4) below. 293

Voiced bilabial fricative sound is not an easily found sound in languages (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996: 133-134). According to Blust, bilabial trills are unique and found only in limited number of languages (2013: 673). In addition to these two phonemes, Nias also has other interesting phonemes such as voiced dental fricative sound realized by letter d in (5), voiceless velar fricative sound represented by kh in (6), and voiced alveolar plosive trill illustrated by ndr in (6). (3) Oŵulo ira ba gosali. They gather in the church. (4) Ulau molombase ua. I take a rest first. Nias is also cool in the kind of unique letters it possesses. It employs letters o with an umlaut put over the letter like in (5) and w with a circumflex over it like in (3) and (6). The use of ö is to realize the phoneme // present in the language while ŵ is to accommodate the phoneme // discussed above. The words fa’aŵö ‘befriend’ and ndra’aga ‘we’ in (6) also pose another issue about Li Niha. There is an apostrophe as a marker of intervocalic glottal stop carried by the second a in the words. Nias texts typed correctly contain these features a lot. (5) Böi halö da’ö. Don’t take it. (6) Fa’aŵö ndra’aga khöu. We befriend you. In addition to those features, Li Niha has both free and bound personal pronouns. Further, the bound ones are divided into pronominal prefix and pronominal suffix. This grammatical rule makes it possible to have Nias sentences that combine a subject, a verb, and an object into just one word. The sentence Lakaoniga, for example, consists of three syntactic functions namely a subject, a verb, and an object. The first part of it, La-, refers to third person plural and is the subject of the sentence or the doer of the action denoted by the verb kaoni- ‘call’. The last part -ga refers to second person plural and acts as the object of action or verb. Thus, that one-word sentence means ‘They call us’. 294

Moreover, this can even be more interesting when the personal pronouns are attached to the verb a ‘eat’ which consists of just one letter. Combining the verb with personal pronouns which also consist of one letter each results in having a sentence like I’a’ö. The pronominal prefix i- can refer to he, she or it as the subject and the pronominal suffix -ö refers to you as the object. Those three letters (or ‘elements’) are separated in such a way by the apostrophe because a and ö carry intervocalic glottal stops. Therefore, i’a’ö could mean it eats you (in referring to a wild animal, for example, or idiomatically when saying that something or someone is ‘killing’ the addressee). Still about this intervocalic stop indicated by an apostrophe, there can be other unique constructions such as u’u’u in Li Niha. The first syllable u- refers to first person singular. The rest of it, -u’u, is a verb which means ‘to hold (something in the mouth)’. So, u’u’u means I hold [something] in my mouth (so that I will not swallow or squirt it out). Further, expression i’a’u’ö ‘he strives’ is commonly heard in Li Niha. The first part of it, i-, refers to third person singular and the rest of the construction -a’u’ö means ‘try hard’. Mutation is considered the most distinguishing feature of Li Niha. As Brown explains, Nias mutation occurs on the initial segments of most nominal constituents and plays a role similar to that of case in other languages (2001: 39). In addition to changes on consonants, Nias mutation also allows changes on initial vowels. The word ahe ‘foot’, for example, will be mutated into word beginning with voiced velar sound g- when used with certain syntactic function (Gulö, 2014). In the construction Ahegu zafökhö ‘It is my foot that hurts’ (in clarifying that it is not the hand that hurts), the noun ahe does not change. In the sentence Afökhö gahegu ‘my foot hurts’ (in the sense that my foot feels something), in contrary, the noun ahe changes into gahe. Other words such as ifö ‘tooth’ changes into nifö, talu ‘stomach’ into dalu, but nukha ‘cloth’ does not change. All of these criteria depend on certain syntactical rules. 3.2 Why Is Li Niha in Danger? Apart from those interesting issues discussed above, Li Niha is in danger of extinction. The language is native to just around 700.000 people whose attitude is generally not supportive toward the language (Brown, 2001: xi, 7; Duha, 2010: 171). This attitude results from the 295

fact that the speakers of the language mistakenly think that they find no importance as well as interesting part to keep it in use. Most teenagers, for example, even feel shy to speak the language. When it comes to contacts with people from other tribes in certain towns or cities, some others prefer to ‘hide’ the fact that they are from Nias tribe or prefer ‘not to’ let people know where they come from. It has to be underlined here, however, that this happens only in public places such as terminals or public transportations, and not in the context of neighborhoods or villages. This negative tendency appears as a form of ‘self-defense’ from other people who consider those who speak vernaculars as unable to speak other languages such as Indonesian and thus less knowledgeable. This in turn will lead them to be robbed or deceived. Yet, not all Nias people are stuck in this kind of perspective toward Li Niha. This can be proved by the increasing number of websites designed to introduce the language to the world. However, although a Nias speaker has a positive perspective toward the language, a lot of things like job field and education could indirectly force him or her to choose other languages such as Indonesian to be his or her daily language; leaving Li Niha ‘out of date’ and not essential in daily life. Having a good attitude about Li Niha does not also mean that someone helps keeping the language from being extinct. These data below illustrate another threat against the language. Grammatical and acceptable forms of the data are put in the brackets. (7) *Atulô si,ai da,ó. (Atulö si’ai da’ö) That’s really true. (8) *Saohag6l6 menotola mitehe gabung drao bada’a. (Saohagölö me no tola mitehe fao ndra’o ba da’a) Thanks for letting me join this group. In sentence (7), there are two inconsistent substitutes for the right letter ö. This can result in non-standard varieties of the letter. Moreover, the comma is incorrectly used where the apostrophe should be put to indicate intervocalic glottal stop. In (8), numeral 6 is used in substitution of the right letter ö. Still to substitute ö, there are those who carelessly use e or plain o in reality when typing. In addition to 296

the explanation of datum (8), some words are incorrectly grouped into one word like me, no, and tola, and the word ndra’o lacks its n and apostrophe. (9) *Awai bulu gae ba hili. (Aŵai bulu gae ba hili) Like the leave of banana tree on a mountain. (10) *Noamae dola gi'a niha bagin6t6 nde,idou wuru wurugio naw6nia. (No amaedola gi’a niha ba ginötö ndre. Idou ŵuruŵuru gi’o naŵönia) People are like fish nowadays. They bite their fellows’ tails. Data (9) and (10) give additional examples about the issues discussed in (7) and (8) above. Another striking linguistic issue here is the use of plain w in replace of that with circumflex as being corrected in the brackets. This is seriously misleading because in Li Niha there is also plain w pronounce exactly as that in Indonesian word sawah ‘paddy field’ or English word towel. Letter ŵ thus needs to be typed appropriately to indicate how the letter should be pronounced. This differentiation is important as the two letters are present in minimal pairs such as bawa ‘month, moon’ and baŵa ‘mouth’. All of the features above make Li Niha a distinct language among others. Although some its native speakers are so proud to have it, however, difficulties faced while using and typing in the language become another serious threat against the language existence. 4. Conclusion The title of this article claims that Li Niha is cool in the sense that it is interesting to use and worthy to maintain. In addition to having some unique characters or alphabets, it even has linguistic features that are rarely found in the world languages. The facts discussed above have proven the claim made. In contrary to this, however, the language is in danger of extinction due to various factors. The main goal of this article is to help introducing the language and threats against it both to the native speakers and linguists. It is urged that speakers of the language as well as other people type the letters and use the language appropriately in social media, song lyrics, and books. 297

References Bauer, Winifred. 2001. Maori Descriptive Grammars. London: Routledge. Blust, Robert. 2013. The Austronesian Languages: Revised Edition. Australia: Asia-Pasific Linguistics. Brown, Lea. 2001. A Grammar of Nias Selatan. Australia: University of Sydney. Duha, Nata’alui. 2010. ‘Li Niha - Bahasa Kita’. In Tim Penyusun. Pusaka Nias dalam Media Warisan. Gunungsitoli: Pusaka Nias. Gulö, Ingatan. 2014. Unique characteristics of Nias language. International Journal of English and Education, 3(3), 26-32. Hämmerle, P. Johannes M. 2012. Ulu Noyo: Cerita Rakyat di Hulu Sungai Oyo. Gunungsitoli: Yayasan Pusaka Nias. Kothari, C. R. 2004. Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques. New Delhi: New Age International Publishers. La’ija, B. 1971. Kumpulan Peribahasa Nias. Gunungsitoli: Pertjetakan BNKP Tohia. Ladefoged, Peter and Ian Maddieson. 1996. The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Lase, Apolonius. 2011. Kamus Li Niha: Nias-Indonesia. Jakarta: Penerbit Buku Kompas. Liamputtong, Pranee. 2008. Doing Cross-Cultural Research: Ethical and Methodological Research. Melbourne: Springer. Marulafau, Siamir. 2004. Morfologi Verba Bahasa Nias Dialek Gunungsitoli. Medan: Universitas Sumatera Utara. Ndruru, Sopani. 2007. Klitika Bahasa Nias Dialek Tengah. Medan: Universitas Sumatera Utara. Stake, Robert E. 2010. Qualitative Research: Studying How Things Work. New York: The Guilford Press.

Book Title Editor Publisher Place/City Year ISBN

: Bahasa Ibu: Pelestarian dan Pesona Bahasanya : Drs. Muh. Abdul Khak, M. Hum, et al. : Unpad Press : Bandung : 2014 : 978-602-9238-70-9 298