Book review, archived from former online periodical Antara Kita: 

Bulletin of the Indonesian

Studies Committee. (On-line bulletin of the Indonesian Studies Committee, Association for
Asian Studies.)

Suggested citation format:

Taylor, Paul Michael. 2001. Review (of) Muna-English Dictionary. Antara Kita: Bulletin of the
Indonesian Studies Committee. Original URL: http://www.antarakita.net/Reviews/r6.htm
Archived at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020330053114/http://www.antarakita.net/Reviews/r6.htm

Muna-English Dictionary.  By René van den Berg, in collaboration with La Ode

Sidu.  Leiden:  KITLV Press, 1996.  [xxx] + 709 pp., maps, illustrations, reverse
index. Reviewed by Paul Michael Taylor, Smithsonian Institution. 

This brief review of van den Berg’s excellent dictionary of the Muna language, spoken in
Southeast Sulawesi, will focus on some ways it may be of broader use to regional specialists,
even those not directly working with Muna or Muna texts.  The compiler admits to sometimes
“overstepping the boundary between dictionary and encyclopaedia” by including as much
information as was available to him within many lexical entries.  The volume is a sequel to his
Muna grammar published in the KITLV’s Verhandelingen series in 1989.  He is also preparing a
Muna-Indonesian dictionary (and in fact the computer database from which this is drawn was
trilingual), but the Muna-English has been published separately here due to limits of space and
cost.  The subsequent phase will be the publication of a corpus of Muna texts.  He estimates there
are 230,000 speakers of Muna, speaking several dialects on Muna (=Wuna) island and on the
west coast of neighboring Buton island.  The compiler does not take long to review the four prior
linguistic and lexicographic sources on the Muna language; clearly the information in them has
been corrected and incorporated in this work. 

The compiler’s methods of gathering so many lexical items are described in detail.  An initial
filing card system for lexical items was developed in his earlier linguistic fieldwork.  These were
then supplemented by three methods:  (1) gathering traditional literature (prose and poetry),
which provided context for the words used in them; (2) lists of semantic domains (birds,
weapons, kinship terms, etc.); and (3) a computer generated “blank dictionary,” which proved
especially useful because of the simple syllable structure of Muna.  This program (used by the
Summer Institute of Linguistics) generated some 19,000 possible words (based on phonological
rules of the language), from which Muna speakers could pick the words that actually do exist,
after which the meaning of these words can be determined. This combination of techniques
makes it very probable that a good sample of the lexical richness of the language is represented
in this dictionary. 

The phonology and mode of transcription are clearly described.  Since the dictionary is
organized by root words, the summary of grammatical information is especially helpful in
stripping off affixes of words to arrive at their roots; and in explaining the parts of speech (and
the morphological verb class) noted for each entry.  This is clearly set up to make the dictionary
useful for reading Muna texts, whenever Muna texts do in fact get published.  Some words
belong to marked registers and are distinguished as such; the registers are:  literary, refined,
coarse, and palace language (the last of which is now obsolete). 

Any dictionary is an on-going project.  In this one, the ethnobiological information is still
minimal; but at least the terms themselves (translated as “kind of tree” etc.) will serve as a
challenge to future ethnobiologists.  This dictionary is also drawn from just one dialect (the
northern or “standard” dialect from Watuputih village, 5 km from the district capital Raha),
though there is said to be considerable dialect variation in other parts of the island.   But in many
domains such as marriage customs, games, or death and burial rites, the lexical entries (with their
excellent choices of sample sentences) serve as intriguing ethnographic vignettes.  Particularly
useful are the 16 pages of illustrations (p. 621-637) of houses, boats, fishing equipment, weaving
and musical instruments, and other material culture, with detailed lexical information.  These
drawings by La Ada, a former teacher who helped develop the dictionary, are especially valuable
because they include many items (such as musical instruments) that have become obsolete.  The
dictionary concludes with a Reverse Index, from English to Muna.  The compiler, his publisher,
and all those who assisted him are to be congratulated for producing this thorough and well-
made dictionary. 

© 2001, Paul M. Taylor