Rejang (, ) is an Austronesian language predominantly spoken by the

Rejang people Rejang people ( Rejang: ''Tun Hejang'' or ''Tun Jang'') are an Austronesian ethnolinguistic group, native to the some parts of Bengkulu Province and South Sumatera Province in the southwestern part of Sumatera Island, Indonesia. They occupied ...

in southwestern parts of Sumatra (

Bengkulu Bengkulu is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southwest coast of Sumatra. It was formed on 18 November 1968 by separating out the former Bencoolen Residency area from the province of South Sumatra under Law No. 9 of 1967 and was fi ...

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 ...

. There are five dialects, spread from mountainous region to the coastal region of

, including the Musi (Musai) dialect, the Lebong dialect, the Kebanagung dialect, the Rawas (Awes) dialect, and the Pesisir dialect.

Classification

Rejang is not obviously close to other

Malayo-Polynesian languages The Malayo-Polynesian languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages, with approximately 385.5 million speakers. The Malayo-Polynesian languages are spoken by the Austronesian peoples outside of Taiwan, in the island nations of Southeast ...

in Sumatra. McGinn (2009) classified it among the

Bidayuh languages The Land Dayak languages are a group of dozen or so languages spoken by the Bidayuh Land Dayaks of Borneo. Languages ''Glottolog'' ''Glottolog'' classifies the Land Dayak languages as follows. *Benyadu-Bekati: Bekati (Bekatiq), Sara, Lara (Rar ...

of Borneo, closest to Bukar–Sadong. It may be that it is related to the newly described language Nasal, but that is speculative at this point.

Robert Blust Robert A. Blust (; ; May 9, 1940 – January 5, 2022) was an American linguist who worked in several areas, including historical linguistics, lexicography and ethnology. He was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Blus ...

and Alexander Smith classified Rejang as part of

Greater North Borneo languages The Greater North Borneo languages are a proposed subgroup of the Austronesian language family. The subgroup covers languages that are spoken throughout much of Borneo (excluding the southeastern area where the Greater Barito languages are spok ...

(2017a, 2017b).

Dialects

Rejang has five different dialects. Speakers of each dialects are able to communicate with one another, in spite of lexical and phonological differences. The four dialects of Rejangs are Curup, Lebong, Kepahiang, and Utara. Among all dialects, Awes dialect is the hardest for the speakers of other dialects.

Writing system

Rejang was written with the

Rejang script The Rejang alphabet, is an abugida of the Brahmic family, and is related to other scripts of the region, like Batak, Lontara, and others. Rejang is a member of the closely related group of Surat Ulu scripts that include the script variants of ...

for a long time. The script is thought to predate the introduction of Islam to the area in the 12th century CE, although the earliest attested document has been dated to the mid-18th century. It is traditionally written on bamboo, buffalo horn, bark or copper plates. It was only recently that the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

was introduced as a way of writing the language.

Phonology

Consonants

A trill is also present, but only in loanwords.

Vowels

Vocabulary

Astronomical terms

Gender

Colour

Pronouns

Numbers

Days of the week

Prepositions

Place

Basic elements

Sample text

The following is a sample text in Rejang, of Article 1 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...

(by the United Nations): : Gloss (word-to-word): :Article 1 – All human was born independent, has an equal rights. They are endowed a way to think and heart; then they need to each other in the taste of brotherhood. Translation (grammatical): :Article 1 – All human beings are born free and equal in rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Notes

Bibliography

* * * *

External links

* Richard McGinn, ''Archive of Materials for the Study of the Rejang of Sumatra''.
Rejang in Unicode Table
{{Languages of Indonesia Greater North Borneo languages Languages of Indonesia