By A.Kathirasen

There is a general belief that anything primitive is bad or inferior. Although the word “primitive” can mean pristine or first, the tendency is to associate it with something old, undeveloped or inferior. Living in an age of countless conveniences, we often dismiss anything that is outdated by describing it as “primitive”, as in “primitive technology”.

But not everything primitive is inferior, as a newly discovered indigenous language – named Jadek – right here in Malaysia shows. Linguists from Sweden’s Lund University, not Malaysian researchers, mind you, discovered the Jadek language as they were collecting language data in several Orang Asli villages in northern Malaysia.

It makes me wonder what our own researchers, especially at taxpayer funded public universities, and the Department of Orang Asli Development, are doing. The foreign researchers found, too, that there are only about 280 people who speak it. The Jadek speakers, part of a community that once foraged along the Pergau River, have since been resettled at Sungai Rual, about 22km from Jeli, in Kelantan.

What I find interesting about the discovery is not so much the language as the mental make-up of the indigenous people – or primitive people, as most would likely call them – as reflected by the language. Make no mistake, every language reflects the mental framework and world view of the community speaking it.

According to a press release from Lund University, the community in which Jadek is spoken is more gender equal than Western societies. Also, there is almost no interpersonal violence, and they consciously encourage their children not to compete. As there is almost no violence, there are no laws or courts.

“There are no professions either, rather everyone has the skills that are required in a hunter-gatherer community. This way of life is reflected in the language. There are no indigenous words for occupations or for courts of law, and no indigenous verbs to denote ownership such as borrow, steal, buy or sell, but there is a rich vocabulary of words to describe exchanging and sharing,” according to the statement.

It quotes Niclas Burenhult, associate professor of general linguistics at Lund University, as saying: “There are so many ways to be human, but all too often our own modern and mainly urban societies are used as the yardstick for what is universally human. We have so much to learn, not least about ourselves, but also from the largely undocumented and endangered linguistic and cultural riches that are out there.”

We who call ourselves civilised and modern, we who live in communities where violence is just a moment of anger away, we who live in a Malaysia where racial and religious relations are somewhat fragile, have much to learn from the Jadek speakers.

So, who is “primitive”, we or the hunter-gatherers living in Kelantan speaking Jadek? Sure, there are many ways in which we are better off, but whose world view is “primitive” – theirs or ours?

The views expressed by the writer are his own and do not necessarily reflect that of FMT.