Banjar language

Banjar (Banjar: Bahasa/Basa Banjar, Indonesian: Bahasa Banjar, Jawi:بهاس بنجر) is an Austronesian language used by the Banjarese people of South Kalimantan, Indonesia. As many Banjarese people are travelling merchants, they brought their language wherever they went all over Indonesia.

Language Use

Especially on the island of Kalimantan, Banjarese can be considered as a lingua franca, as it is used widely in three of the four provinces of Kalimantan: South Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, and Central Kalimantan, with the exception of West Kalimantan, where proper Malay is more popular.

Phonology

Relationship to Standard Malay

Although Banjarese is considered to be local Malay, it is not particularly close to other Malayan languages. It is divided into two major dialects; the upper river (Banjar Hulu) and down river (Banjar Kuala) dialects. The main differences of the two dialects can be found in phonology and lexicons, although slight differences in syntactic structure can also be noticed. Banjar Hulu has only three vowels, namely /i/, /u/, and /a/. When a word contains vowels other than these three, the foreign vowel will be replaced with one of them based on the closeness of height and other quality of the vowels.