page_title: Orang Seletar
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Orang Seletar / Language
caption_attribution_description: Orang Seletar
context_page_description: Orang Seletar are one of the 18 Orang Asli ethnic groups in Malaysia. They are classified under the Proto-Malay people group, which forms the three major people group of the Orang Asli. The Orang Seletar are also considered as part of the Orang Laut, natives of the Straits of Johor; separating Singapore from Peninsula Malaysia.
  Despite their proximity to developed countries, the Orang Seletar largely retain a traditional way of life. In Singapore, the Seletar people are considered to be part of the Malay community. In Malaysia, the government considers the Orang Seletar to be one of the 18 Orang Asli officially registered tribes. As Orang Asli, the Seletar people are protected by the Department of Orang Asli Development, which was previously known as the Department of Orang Asli Affairs until 2011. The purpose of JAKOA is to raise the standard of living of the indigenous population to meet the average indicators of the country.
  Although the Orang Seletar were originally classed as part of the Orang Laut, the Malaysian government and JAKOA classifies Seletar people as one of the indigenous Proto-Malay tribes, one of the three Orang Asli subgroups today.
context_section_description: They speak in the Orang Seletar language, which belongs to the Malay group of Austronesian languages. The Ethnologue project assigns it to the Malay (macrolanguage).
  French researcher Christian Pelras in 1972, conducted an analysis of the language at that time with the available Orang Seletar language dictionary. He came to the conclusion that it was only a dialect of the Malay language, since 85% of the Seletar words were Malay, and another 5% of the words are also present in Malay but have a slightly different meaning. 10% of the remaining words have no analogues in the Malay language. Some of this latter group seems to have matches in the languages commonly used on the island of Kalimantan. However, there are also words of which Pelras could not find analogues in other Austronesian languages. Among the 15% of the non-Malay words in the Orang Seletar language there are almost no words common in the neighboring Duano' language.
  Fresh data from field research that was published in 2015 by Kevin Blissett and Dirk Elling. As a result of a survey on the Orang Seletar language media was a list of general vocabulary drawn up in corresponse to the generally accepted conventional Swadesh list. Answers of respondents were recorded on a digital voice recorder, and then decoded with the International Phonetic Alphabet. It provides valuable information on how to actually say spoken words. However, this is only the beginning of the research. This language still requires a huge amount of additional study and records before it is stored to a large extent.
  Like the findings of Pelras, these data capture the close lexical affinity of the Orang Seletar language with the Malay language. Many words are exactly the same as their correspondences in the Malay language; others can be derived from Malay words by simple phonological changes. A small group of words seems to be unique to the Orang Seletar language, without apparent connection with the Malay language. Such characteristics indicates it as a Malay dialect, but not as an entirely independent language.
  However, there are also strong counter arguments. Firstly, the Orang Seletar language is not understandable to the Malay people. Secondly, both the Malay and the Seletar people considers the Malay language and Orang Seletar language as separate languages. In addition, it appears to have a significant grammatical differences between these two languages.
  There is an alarming situation with the state of the Orang Seletar language. So far, representatives of senior and middle aged generations communicate with each other exclusively or mainly in their native language, but younger generations and people living outside the community are more likely to use Malay language. There was a situation where, with each generation, the caretakers of the Orang Seletar language became increasingly lesser, and what is even more disturbing is that lesser Seletar people are often teaching their mother tongue to their own children. Thus, there is a tendency towards the gradual displacement of the Orang Seletar language, similarly as well as the language of other indigenous Orang Asli peoples of Peninsular Malaysia, with the standard Malay language. It is no surprise that the UNESCO includes the Orang Seletar language into the number of languages that are at serious risk of disappearance.
  There is no writing system in the Orang Seletar language.
caption: A Seletar girl in Pasir Gudang, Johor.
exif: {"Image Make": "PENTAX", "Image Model": "PENTAX K-x", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Photo Viewer 6.1.7600.16385", "Image DateTime": "2013:12:19 22:14:55", "Image Artist": "EMRANK photography 2013", "Image WhitePoint": "[313/1000, 329/1000]", "Image PrimaryChromaticities": "[16/25, 33/100, 21/100, 71/100, 3/20, 3/50]", "Image YCbCrCoefficients": "[299/1000, 587/1000, 57/500]", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "Emran Kassim", "Image ExifOffset": "2526", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 0, 33, 0, 1, 0, 22, ... ]", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "71/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2013:12:12 11:16:08", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2013:12:12 11:16:08", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "18", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2848", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4288", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R03", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "58308", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "27", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Hard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "2", "EXIF Gamma": "11/5", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "3792"}