Richards dedicated thirty years of his life to a single, monumental task: compiling the definitive Iban-English dictionary. He traveled up the Batang Lupar and Rejang rivers, staying in longhouses. He sat by the fire, listening to the tuai rumah (longhouse headmen) and the lemambang (bard-poets).
The Iban language ( Jaku Iban ) is the native tongue of the Iban people, the largest indigenous group in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, with significant communities in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. For travelers, anthropologists, missionaries, and anyone working in the interior of Borneo, finding a reliable Iban dictionary has historically been a challenge. Enter the app (based on the works of Rev. William Howell, D.J. Prentice, and R.J. Wilkinson’s A Malay-English Dictionary with Iban entries). iban dictionary
The IBAN dictionary plays a crucial role in facilitating international transactions by: Richards dedicated thirty years of his life to
Search for “Ngajat” (Iban dance). Most pocket dictionaries fail. The Iban Dictionary provides: The Iban language ( Jaku Iban ) is
This led to the work of and other local intellectuals. They recognized that Richards' work, while brilliant, used a spelling system that was becoming outdated. The orthography (spelling rules) needed to be standardized so that children in Kuching could learn the language in schools.