| Kĕnaboi | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Malaysia |
| Region | Negeri Sembilan |
| Era | attested c. 1880 |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xbn |
xbn.html | |
| Glottolog | kena1236 |
Kĕnaboi is anextinct unclassified language ofNegeri Sembilan,Malaysia that may be alanguage isolate or anAustroasiatic language belonging to theAslian branch. It is attested in what appears to be two dialects,[1][2] based on word lists of about 250 lexical items, presumably collected around 1870–90.
InWalter William Skeat andCharles Otto Blagden's 1906 work "Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula",[3] the contents of three previously unpublished wordlists appear, two of which were collected by D.F.A. Hervey, a former government official in Malacca. There is no indication as to when these word lists were collected; however, there is a possibility that these wordlists were collected around the 1870s to 1890s.[4]
Hervey collected his Kenaboi lexicon inAlor Gajah,Malacca from speakers living inGunung Dato',[5] which is a mountain situated inRembau District, southernNegeri Sembilan. Based on the ethnonym, the Kenaboi may have originated from the Kenaboi River valley ofJelebu District, northern Negeri Sembilan (Hajek 1998). Today, theOrang Asli of Negeri Sembilan are primarilyTemuan speakers.
John Hajek (1998)[4] proposes that Kenaboi is a mixed language of bothAslian andAustronesian origins, with Kenaboi (dialect 1) having a higher proportion of Austroasiatic words than Kenaboi (dialect 2). Kenaboi (dialect 1) also has many words of unknown origin, such asmambu 'white' andpar 'water'. Hajek (1998) speculates that the lexical aberrancy of Kenaboi 1 may be due to the fact that Kenaboi 1 was a specialtaboo language, while Kenaboi 2 was the regular non-taboo language. The lexicon of Kenaboi 1 is 47% Austroasiatic, 27% Austronesian, and 26% unclassified out of a total of 216 words.[4]
Hammarström, et al.[6] note inGlottolog that Kenaboi is best considered to be alanguage isolate, and do not consider arguments of Kenaboi as a taboo-jargon (argot) to be convincing. Skeat and Blagden (1906) considers Kenaboi as an isolate unrelated to Austroasiatic and Austronesian.
Rasa, another extinct language documented in Skeat & Blagden (1906) nearRasa inUlu Selangor, also has many words of uncertain origin (Phillips 2012: 257-258).[7]
Other Southeast Asian languages with high proportions of unique vocabulary of possibleisolate origin: