A branch of the Dayak ethnic group formerly known as "Sea Dayak" who live in Sarawak, the Indonesian province of Kalimantan Barat and in Brunei, Iban (also known as "Bahasa Iban") belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family.
It is closely related to Malay. Iban is also known as a the "headhunters language" in some, unflattering, circles. The language is mostly taught to students in rural areas with a large Iban population, such as Baleh (Kapit), Betong, Saratok, Lubok Antu and Pelagus (Kapit).
According to my research, during the colonial regime (1946-1963), the Iban language was recognized/used during the Council Negeri meetings.The Borneo Literature Bureau was set up to help popularize the language through its Iban magazine called Nendak and through the printing of Iban books. When Sarawak obtained independence through the formation of Malaysia, the Borneo Literature Bureau (BLB) was abolished and in its place, in 1978, the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) took over. The abolishment of BLB saw several hundreds of Iban books and magazines destroyed.
The Iban committee tirelessly worked to get this language back in schools, although it is still difficult to find publications in the Iban language. However, just this month, an Iban dictionary was to be published containing "17,000 core words and over 60,000 imitatives from the different regions of Sarawak". "There are English-Iban, Iban-Bahasa Malaysia and Iban-English dictionaries, but as far as we know, it is the first of its kind. It is possibly the first in the country, if not the world", according to Dr Robert Menua Saleh (the research director at The Tun Jugah Foundation).
Some sample Iban phrases, courtesy of Omniglot, are as follows:
Welcome Selamat datai
Good morning Selamat pagi
Good afternoon Selamat tengah hari
Good night Selamat lamai
Long time no see Udah lama enda betemu
kalau dalam bahasa iban, apa maksud Ti dan juga Sulu
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