“No human culture is inaccessible to someone who makes the effort to understand, to learn, to inhabit another world.” - Henry Louis Gates Jr

Introduction:

A lot of people always get confused with the terms “Tausūg”, “Sinūg” and “Bahasa Sūg”. I got into an I-thought-I-was-right situation before. We often ask “Do they mean the same thing, or are they different?”.

This is something that must be explained when we want to learn the language itself. Although the three terms are most of the time used alternately to refer to the language (which is quite wrong and confusing to do so), a clear distinction must be made between them to avoid further confusion!

With that said, here are 3 terms, their differences, and why we should know how to use them properly! 👊

1. TAUSŪG

“Tausūg” came from two words: TAU meaning "people" and SŪG which means "sea current". Hence, the word literary means “People of the sea current” or “People of the sea”. The term refers to the people who are living in the Sulu archipelago: the Sulu group of islands, Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga and even Sabah (North Borneo). It’s a long story! It should NOT be used to refer to the language that these proud people are using.

Example:

Tausūg hi Ahmad.
(Ahmad is a Tausūg)

2. BAHASA SŪG

BAHASA came from the Sanskrit word bhasha (स्त्रीलिंग) which means "language". Hence, "Bahasa Sūg" is the name of the language the people of Sulu (The Tausugs) are using.

Ex.:

Makahãti aku Bahasa Sūg.
(I can understand Bahasa Sūg)

3. SINŪG

SINŪG on the other hand, is the form or "way of speaking" the language. It can also mean "the translation" of a word to Bahasa Sūg. An example:

Unu in sinūgan sin "house"?
(What is the translation (to Bahasa Sug) for 'house'?)

Malayo-Polynesian Roots

Just like most of the languages in Southeast Asia, Bahasa Sūg is considered one of the languages that came from its Malayo-Polynesian ancestor. Although there are quite some unique words and terms in Bahasa Sūg, similarities with the neighboring Malay languages such as Filipino (Tagalog) and Bahasa Malayu is a part of. Also influenced by the Hindu and Islamic empires (way back in time) there are also Tausūg terms that were derived from the Hindu and Arabic terms. Bahasa Sūg has a more closer affinity with Philippine local dialects such as Binisaya and Kamayo, and even Tagalog is also noted. This is one good reason why it is easier for Filipinos to learn Bahasa Sūg than other people.

Sulat Sug

During the olden times, the Tausūgs had a way of writing their Bahasa into texts. It is known as “Sulat Sug”. It is just similar to the Arabic Hurufs (letters) but with some variations which are closer to (and are inspired by) Malaysian Jawi writings. Old documents such as treaties and compacts made between the Sulu Sultanate and other foreign countries are usually recorded in Sulat Sug. I have seen a number of these in museums, and I can easily decode and understand most of them! Cool, huh? Even my grandmother is still using this kind of writing when sending us letters. (It doesn’t mean she’s that old! I am just stressing the fact that it is still being used today in some parts of our place.)

But eventually, Sulat Sug had slowly drifted with time. With the arrival of western education and the introduction of the Latin way of writing, more and more Tausūgs have forgotten how to write in Sulat Sug, after preferring the Latin writings… (Yup, that’s a sad story. Things like these are just inevitable to happen). Only a small number of Tausūgs, mostly uneducated in Western education, still use the Sulat Sug.

Writing Sinūg words in Latin Letters

We are nowadays using the modern way of writing, which is the Latin letters. But there are some sounds in Bahasa Sūg that do not have their exact equivalents in Latin letters (because Bahasa Sūg is also a mixture of other languages such as Arabic). This is the reason why a lot of problems are met when writing Bahasa Sūg into Latin Letters. There are confusion as to which letter would represent this kind of sound; or if the letters “o” and “e” are allowed, and so on.

Unfortunately, there is no available concrete “Guide to Writing Bahasa Sūg” yet (or maybe I haven’t found it yet). Maybe there are a few published Tausūg Dictionaries, with instructions and the like, but only a few have access to them. This is also another reason why we only have a few number of Books published in Bahasa Sūg. Maybe sometime in the future, this will be solved eventually, In sha Allah :-). I know there are several individuals out there, working on this problem now… So we have to wait a little longer yet. And as for us wanting to learn the Bahasa Sūg using the Latin letters, we will try as much to keep them simple. We will try to find solutions along the way.

In summary:

The words Tausūg, Bahasa Sūg, and Sinūg are often mistaken to mean the same thing. But actually, they are not: Tausūg is the word for the people of Sulu, Bahasa Sūg is the language they speak, and Sinūg is the way of speaking that said language.

Bahasa Sūg originated from a Malayo-Polynesian root and was influenced by Hindu and Islamic empires before it was introduced to the modern Latin letters during the age of conquest. This gave birth to a unique language with similarities to its neighboring countries like the Philippines' Filipino, Bisaya, and Malaysia's Bahasa Malay.

Sulat Sug is an old way of writing using the Jawi scriptures (which in turn was derived from Arabic letters).

Now that we know these basic facts about the Tausūg people and their language, it is time to learn the basics of Bahasa Sūg!

Watch this video to learn more:

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