Kutai is a Malayic language spoken by 300,000 to 500,000 people. It is the native language of the Kutai people (, Kutai: ''Urang Kutai''), the indigenous ethnic group which lives along the Mahakam River in

Borneo Borneo (; id, Kalimantan) is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia. At the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, in relation to major Indonesian islands, it is located north of Java Isl ...

, especially in North Kalimantan,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. They are the principal population in the regencies of

West Kutai West Kutai Regency ( id, Kabupaten Kutai Barat) is a regency (''kabupaten'') in the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan. It previously covered a much greater area, with a population of 165,091 at the 2010 Census, but in December 2012 the five ...

, Kutai Kartanegara, and East Kutai within North Kalimantan province. Kutai is part of the local Bornean Malayic languages and is closely related but distinct to

Banjar language The Banjar or Banjarese (; ) is an Austronesian language predominantly spoken by the Banjarese—an indigenous ethnic group native to Banjar regions— in the southeastern Kalimantan of Indonesia. The Banjarese language is the lingua f ...

in South Kalimantan, Berau, also spoken in North Kalimantan and to some extent Brunei-Kedayan Malay as well. Kutai forms a dialect continuum between the two varieties and all three share similar phonology and vocabulary with each other.

Literature

Kutai for most of its history is mainly a spoken language and is mostly used as a form of poetry ('' pantun''). During the period of the Kutai Kartanegara Sultanate, most literature was written in Standard Malay in

Jawi script Jawi (; ace, Jawoë; Kelantan-Pattani: ''Yawi''; ) is a writing system used for writing several languages of Southeast Asia, such as Acehnese, Banjarese, Kerinci, Maguindanaon, Malay, Minangkabau, Tausūg, and Ternate. Jawi is based ...

instead of Kutai Malay.

Dialects

Kutai, as with many Malay varieties on the island, is a dialect continuum. A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a spread of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighbouring varieties differ only slightly, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties are not mutually intelligible. There are three principal dialects of Kutai Malay language; all three have little

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...

with each other due to the geographical proximity of these dialects. The three main dialects are Tenggarong, Kota Bangun, and Ancalong Estuary.

References

Languages of Indonesia Agglutinative languages Malay dialects {{malayic-lang-stub Malayic languages