Baduy (or sometimes referred to as Kanekes) is one of the Sundanese-Baduy languages spoken predominantly by the Baduy people. It is sometimes considered a dialect of Sundanese, but more often it is considered a separate language due to its diverging vocabulary and cultural reasons that differ from the rest of the Sundanese people. Native speakers of the Baduy language are spread in regions around the Mount Kendeng, Rangkasbitung district of Lebak Regency and Pandeglang Regency, Banten Province, Indonesia. It is estimated that there are 11,620 speakers as of 2015.

Just like Sundanese, Baduy based on linguistic typology is a language that sequences sentence structure elements of type subject–verb–object word order. As an agglutinative language, Baduy has various affixes which are still productive. Verbs can be distinguished into transitive and intransitive forms, as well as active and passive.

Classification 

The position of Sundanese-Baduy languages is still being debated between the Malayo-Sumbawan and Greater North Borneo which are both in the branch Malayo-Polynesian in Austronesian languages.

Some reference sources classify Baduy as part of Banten Sundanese dialect. However, unlike some other Sundanese dialects in the Banten which has been mixed with elements of non-Sundanese languages, Baduy only gets a little influence from other languages and still retains some language elements of Old Sundanese as its predecessor, this contrasts when compared to several other Sundanese dialects which are considered more modern.

Current status 
Baduy is one of the regional languages in Indonesia and its existence is sufficiently preserved by the local government, although research on this language is still relatively small. The use of the Baduy language is considered as the most important marker of ethnic identity for the Baduy people. Even though the Baduy themselves are a isolated society, in fact some of them have bilingual ability, which means they can also communicate using Indonesian in their daily lives, especially when speaking with others from outside the Baduy who come to their area.

Ethnologue classifies Baduy as a language with level 6a which is categorized as vigorous (strong) on the EGIDS scale, and its development shows a positive attitude.

Phonology 
There is no difference between Baduy and Sundanese and several other dialects in phonology. Phonemes Both languages these show the same number of phonemes, as many as 25 phonemes with 7 vowel phonemes and 18 consonant phonemes. However, for the phonemes /ə/, /o/, /ɨ/, and /i/ in Baduy there are variations in usage, such as in the words tolu, teulu and tilu 'three', euweuh and oweuh  'none', and enya and onya 'yes'.

Vowels 
Vowel phonemes in Baduy are /ɛ/ , /a/, /ɨ/ , /ə/ , /i/, /ɔ /  and /u/.

Consonants 
The 18 Baduy consonant phonemes can be described in the following table.

Intonation
In terms of accent or word pressure and intonation, the Baduy show a very prominent characteristic. Words with two syllables generally get the stress increasing on the first syllable, then decreasing on the second, such as héjo becomes héj'jo (green), dukun becomes duk'kun (shaman), iheung becomes ih'heung (I don't know) and others.

Intonation in sentences is indeed a distinct characteristic found in Baduy. Sometimes in a sentence it ends with tone down sound, or with a flat tone. Likewise, the interrogative sentence does not always end with a rising voice, but sometimes it ends with a lowering voice.

Characteristics 
The Baduy community (especially the Inner Baduy) are generally a society that is isolated from the outside world so that the language they use is not much influenced by languages that exist outside their territory such as Indonesian or other Sundanese dialects. In general, the influence of language from outside like this is only found in the Panamping Baduy or Outer Baduy.

Lexicon

Features 
At the lexicon level, for example vocabulary, there are several typical Baduy vocabularies that are not found or are not commonly used in several other Sundanese dialects, especially Priangan Sundanese. A comparison of several differences between the Baduy lexicon and standard Sundanese can be seen in the table below. Other typical lexicons can be seen in here.

Lexical changes 
Changes lexical found between Baduy and Sundanese can be analyzed and grouped into several types of processes, some of which are in the form of vocabulary that can be found between the two languages such as for example beurat [bɤrat] 'heavy' with different variations such as abot [abot] in standard Sundanese and badot [badot] 'heavy' in Baduy language. The second type of lexical change is in the form of vocabulary that can be found between the two languages but the variations are only found in Baduy language, for example beulah [bɤlah] 'split' and bareuh [barɤh] 'swelling' with typical Baduy variations bencar [bəncar] 'split' and kembung [kəmbʊŋ] 'swelling' which is not found in standard Sundanese. The next type of lexical change can be in the form of vocabulary that is not related to each other between Baduy and standard Sundanese, for example nyaring [ɲarɪŋ] 'lying' in Bedouin with ngagolér [ŋagolεr] 'lay' in standard Sundanese. The type of lexical change that others are in the form of vocabulary whose pronunciation differs between Baduy and standard Sundanese with variations found only in Baduy, for example enteu [əntɤ] 'no' in Indonesian Baduy with henteu [həntɤ] 'no' in standard Sundanese with typical Baduy variations moan [mowan] 'no'.

References

Note list

Citation

Bibliography

Reading list

Further reading

External links 

 Baduy lemmas list on Wiktionary
 Online Baduy Cultural Dictionary
 Badui | Ethnologue
 Badui - Multitree 
 OLAC resources in and about the Badui language

Sundanese language
Languages of Indonesia