Banjar language


Banjar is an Austronesian language spoken by the Banjar people of South Kalimantan province of Indonesia. Since the Banjarese were historically nomadic merchants, Banjarese has been spoken throughout modern Indonesia and the Malay world.

Use

Especially on the island of Kalimantan, Banjarese can be considered as a lingua franca, as it is used widely in three of the five provinces of Kalimantan: South Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, and Central Kalimantan; on West Kalimantan and North Kalimantan, Malay is more popular.

Relationship to Standard Malay

Although Banjarese is sometimes considered to be Malay, it is not particularly close to other Malayan languages. It is divided into two major dialects: the upper river and down river dialects. The main differences between the two dialects can be found in phonology and lexicons, but slight differences in syntactic structure can also be noticed. Banjar Hulu has only three vowels, namely /i/, /u/, and /a/. When a word contains vowels other than the three, the foreign vowel will be replaced with one of them based on the closeness of height and other quality of the vowels.

Pronunciation

A Banjarese speaker trying to pronounce the English word "logo" will sound like they are pronouncing the Indonesian word for innocent, "lugu". The Indonesian word "orang" for human will be pronounced "urang". The word "ke mana" will be pronounced and even often spelled "ka mana". Other distinctive characteristics of the Banjar Hulu dialect is that words beginning with a vowel are most likely to be pronounced with an /h/ sound in front of the words. The addition of the /h/ sound can also be noticed in the spelling.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Alphabet

Dialects

A minor dialect, Bukit, is assigned a separate ISO code.