Modang

Abstract

Over a large area in Bulungan, Berau and Northern Kutai we find the dialects of a language which we shall indicate as Modang, this being the name under which different groups of speakers of these dialects are occasionally taken together. The most detailed information on one dialect, spoken in northern Kutai, we owe to Barth, who added a vocabulary of what he calls Long Glat to his Busang dictionary (213). Nieuwenhuis believes that the Long Glat, like the Kayan and the Kenyah, originally came from Apo Kayan (38); the wordlist shows that the vocabulary differs considerably from Kenyah and Kayan. On his map Barth indicates several settlements of the Long Glat on the Upper Mahakam, and also at Long Bleh on the Belayan, a tributary of the Mahakam, and at Long Wé (Wai) on the Kelinjau, an affluent of the Telèn, likewise a tributary of the Mahakam. For Long Wai we possess a wordlist by Bock (221), and from this list and from information provided by Von de Wall, Robidé van der Aa compiled a list of what he called Modang; this list is to be found in the Dutch edition of Bock’s work (222). The differences between these two lists can only be partly explained as arising from differences between the English and the Dutch spelling. A Long Wai vocabulary is also to be found at Jakarta (29).