Lampung

Abstract

For the study of the language of the Lampung districts the foundations were laid by Van der Tuuk. Towards the end of his stay in Holland he published in facsimile the collection of Lampung manuscripts brought back by the former Governor General Sloet van de Beele (143). This edition still remains the principal source for the Lampung script. Van der Tuuk only obtained a better acquaintance with this language during his two years’ stay in the area. The published results of this stay mainly concern the phonetic system and the relationship between the various dialects (144); he never found the time for a closer description of the language. The lexicographical material he collected is difficult to handle; it has been deposited in the Leiden University Library and consists of two different versions of an alphabetical wordlist, which are complementary, but many deviations from the alphabetical order occur (145). Helfrich selected and published the terms concerning adat law from Van der Tuuk’s lists (146). It is also to Helfrich that we owe most of the later publications on Lampung, of which his glossary of the Kroë dialect (147) deserves mention, as well as the Komering texts, published in the article mentioned above (108). R. Schröter’s Lampung grammar, a Hamburg doctor’s thesis, is completely based on these texts; being of too narrow a scope this book provides less than would otherwise have been the case, even without collecting new material (148). Before the war the author of these lines compiled a basic list for a Lampung dictionary from Van der Tuuk’s and Helfrich’s data, augmented by information from written and oral sources. The chances that this work will ever come to light again are slight; it has probably been destroyed. Possibly there still exists the manuscript of a Komering dictionary, compiled by one of the participants in the Palembang competition mentioned earlier.