The essence of being KaDus

Being a product of two different ethnics parents is probably one of the things that I'm proud of myself. It's widely perceived that Kadazan and Dusun ethnics in Sabah have no difference at all. In fact the name can only tell you which part of the land you're from. If you profess you're Kadazan, then you're most likely from the urban areas and most definitely won't hail from some villages in from some rather random jungles. It may be true to some people, but I beg to differ from this definition.

My mom's a DusunTatana while my pop's a Kadazan. I can relate their ethnicities from the geography alone, sure enough. Mom comes from a rather obscure village by a bush, and Dad was born and raised in a rather uptown village near the city that's once known as the Jesselton. And I'd like to stress out that they definitely speak entirely different set of languages, not just differences in dialects. They don't have a union in their vocabulary sets.

Now, I've not the knack for languages (no, not even English). I've always been on the average ranking when it comes to linguistics. I suppose when you've both mom and dad conversing in their own languages to each other, you'll just rather give up learning other new languages for fun. (I think if I try, I can probably explain myself better in numbers and algebras.) I can read and write comfortably with both DusunTatana and Kadazan, and understand perfectly well either language that ones use to speak to me. But there is one thing that I'm not so proud of when I say I'm a Kadazan Dusun girl: conversing these languages. Unlike other languages that I use at schools and later my student life, these languages fluency don't flow as smooth as waterfall through my mouth. Rather, I think it resembles more and more like mud flow, in that you've to provide enough force to jerk it out.

There are probably other things that I'm ashamed of (no, I don't associate myself with snoring with wild abandon, thank goodness!), but having to need sometime to construct sentences to carry on with the conversation in your head before spitting them out is definitely a sign of either rusting mother-tongues exercises or I'm simply no longer a KaDus girl!

I pray that, as long as I shall live, I will not ever become the latter.

Comments: In Mom's language, star is known as kudingking while Dad'll probably call the same thing romituon. (Didn't I warn you already it's not the dialects?)