Pairin Kitingan: Mother tongues risk fading when no longer spoken at home

KOTA KINABALU: Mother tongues risk fading when they are no longer regularly heard and spoken, particularly at home.

Kadazandusun Cultural Association president Tan Sri Joseph Pairin Kitingan said this is a risk he knew from personal experience.

Recalling his childhood, Pairin said he was separated from his parents at 10 and lived in a school hostel in Tawau, where about 90 per cent of the boarders spoke Hakka.

"So, every day I heard Hakka. Eventually, I could speak Hakka.

"But because I had no one around me speaking my mother tongue, I almost forgot it," he said when met after officiating the Borneo Cultural & Heritage Corner (BCHC) in conjunction with the Kota Kinabalu International Book Fair 2026 at the Sabah International Convention Centre here.

Pairin, the Huguan Siou or paramount leader of the Kadazandusun community, said that after becoming involved in community activities, returning to his village and visiting other districts, he began hearing local languages being spoken again.

Gradually, his command of the languages improved, and he can now speak Tambunan and Penampang, as well as some Lotud and Murut.

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"Every language is at risk of disappearing over time if it is simply left alone, if nothing is done, if it is not spoken or written, especially if parents do not speak their respective languages at home.

"If there is nothing to hear, nothing goes into the mind, nothing is kept in the heart and nothing comes out in writing," he said.

He said communities needed to value the languages inherited from their ancestors and continue writing, recording and sharing them.

"Otherwise, eventually it will disappear. It will no longer be heard," he said.

At the event, Pairin also launched 25 children's books in Kadazandusun.

The books were produced through a collaboration between the Kadazandusun Language Department of Institut Pendidikan Guru (IPG) Kampus Kent, Tuaran, and the Kadazandusun Language Foundation (KLF), with the involvement of students from the Bachelor of Teaching Degree Programme (PISMP) in Kadazandusun Language under the guidance of their lecturers.

Asked whether children's books could help preserve the language, Pairin said: "I think it will definitely help."

Pairin said awareness of mother tongues was beginning to grow, including through writing, publishing and education.

"I think our awareness has begun to grow. That is why our language is now being written, published and incorporated into the school curriculum," he said.

However, he said the foundation for keeping a mother tongue alive still began at home.

"Language must be spoken at home, as the first school," he said.