Iban language

Spoken in

  • Austronesian Malayo -Polynesian Malayo - Sumbawan languages Malay languages Ibanische languages

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Iba

Iba

Iban is a language that is spoken by the eponymous Dayak ethnic group of the Iban. The Iban live in the north west of the island of Borneo in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, in the Indonesian province of Kalimantan Barat and in Brunei. The Iban language is part of the Malayo -Polynesian language branch of the Austronesian language family, and is very closely related to the Malay, which is ancestor to the modern Indonesian and Malay. Early researchers described the Iban sometimes even a dialect of Malay.

In addition to the approximately 710,000 Iban who speak it as their first language, the language is still spoken by some 300,000 people as a second language who are not Iban themselves.

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