Bisaya

Abstract

Following the coast towards the North-East, we come to the Bisaya area. This language is spoken by groups of that name near Brunei Bay, mainly on the Klias Peninsula, on Labuan Island in the bay, and along the lower course of the Limbang River on Sarawak territory near the Brunei border (149). To the Bisaya linguistic area there belongs furthermore the language of several groups living to the South-West of the bay, usually referred to by other names, about which data are to be found in Ray’s work. For Ray includes in one and the same category the language he calls Bisaya, for which he possessed both manuscript vocabularies and the data provided by St. John (42, 1) and by de Crespigny (10,1), and the language of the Orang Bukit (Kadayan) on the Upper Balait and the Tutau Rivers, and of the Orang Bukit (Bekiau) on the Tutong River near the Nyamok River, where he had wordlists compiled (2, p. 43). The words he mentions seems to justify this division. It moreover finds support in statements by Leach who says in addition (4, p. 78) that “the Pagan Bukit who live on the Tutoh [= Tutau in Ray] close to Batu Blah claim to be Bisaya”, whilst slightly earlier he presumably refers to these same Bukit as “the Bukit-Bisaya group on the Baram”, of which river the Tutoh or Tutau is a tributary.