Marriage is one of the most important events in people's life. Hence, marriage is about people's lives who are married and involves their parents, even more broadly, concerns the whole family.1 It means the marriage between the groom and bride is a tight bound between two big families.

To conduct a wedding ceremony, cooperation in a big family plays an important role in making it succeed. Cooperation is very useful to develop human resources and improve society's welfare through the value of togetherness in performing a difficult job alone.2

In Mandailingnese, the bride must move into the groom's house (groom parent's house) due to becoming the groom's responsibility to take care of her and his big family. The bride's parents move into the groom's after being pronounced as wife and husband is conducted as one step in the wedding ceremony, namely mangalap boru (picking the bride). In this activity, the groom and bride's big family do markobar (speech) to convince the bride's family that they will take care of the bride as their daughter.

In this study, the researcher described the markobar in mangalap boru activity, which explains the meaning of the speech to strengthen the bride's mental and remind other women who present at that time about their destiny.

Mandailing is a group of people who live on the southwest coast of the mainland on Sumatra, specifically in South Tapanuli. The location of the study was in Pasar Binanga village, Barungun District, Padang Lawas Regency, North Sumatera Province. This study used the qualitative method and ethnographic model. As the qualitative method, this study was subject perspective or wellknown as emic viewpoint ‘insider's point of view’.

The data were taken using a recording, interview by using purposive sampling, and observation.3 The anthropolinguistic approach was used as the core to investigate the speech event in markobar of mangalap boru. This research was conducted at Pasar Binanga Village, Barumun District, Padang Lawas Regency, North Sumatera Province for 6 months in March–September 2020.

Mandailing wedding ceremony deals with a requirement of marriage according to Islam law. Marriage takes place before the candidate, the bride (boru na ni oli) was brought to the groom's house (bayo pangoli). Below is the table for an explanation about the steps of mangalap boru in the bride parent's house after getting married.

Table 1 shows the steps that consist of three steps containing the speech to strengthen the bride about her situation later. In the first steps, the groom's family stated that they had planned to prepare a party for the boru (bride) to welcome her in their place. Below was the markobar to express the request from the groom's family to pick up the bride:

Sondia do obar mangalap boru?

Sobisa ita manyaloseon masalahon parjolo ita maligi masalahna sotai robarkon, masalah nabiasa iadatta

Ima baen mandung isaliseon parsoalan

Tuor dot nikah tontu giotta mai manogu boru

(How do we make a meeting to pick up the bride?

To solve the problem, we first look at the problem so that we can discuss it.

Problems as usual in our customs.

Because the issue of his marriage dowry had already been resolved, of course, the next step was to take the bride.)

In this session, the markobar was delivered by the groom's side to open the conversation. At this moment, the atmosphere of emotion was seen because the time had come for the bride to leave her house. At that time, the bride's father brings the hands together with the bride and groom and say, “I am giving my daughter to you to be taken. Now and hereafter, she is your responsibility”.4

The next steps was the hand over responsibility for the safety of the bride. bayo pangoli (groom) and boru na dioli (bride) also sit on pantar back and forth (where people gather in the house). All items default has been put in the middle of the fire (alternating), which is on interpret it as pasahat mara (meaning to give up salvation) boru na ni oil and luggage to bayo pangoli and his family (is the full responsibility). During this pasahat mara event, the boru na ni oil family must explain to the bayo pangoli family that this girl is not can be wasted because, for the family, this child is a child (have high marks).

Tu bagas ni alaklai nai.

Onma bahan obankonon tu mora ni bayoi

Tai biasona sasampe tu bagas nimora padti ipanaek tu bagas adat,

Dibagas adat borui ijago anakboru nimora, raja, mora nimora nipangoli, hatobangon, malim dot kapala desa

Nah tontu pihak nipangoli nadiparwakilkon tu kahanggina

Angkan nandok songon giot parmasalahan taon ima dot hata

To the house of the groom

This is the luggage to mora's house

but usually when he arrived at his house mora went straight to the traditional house/party

The customary spirit/bridal party is guarded by the mora's daughters, the king, the mora, the parents in the village, the religious scholars, and the village head.

So, of course, the family we went to was represented by the kahangg'si going to how we solve this (custom) problem with language.

The groom's family convinced the bride's family that they would take care of the bride as their family member. Besides, there is mora (group in groom's family who have the same clan with the bride who lives in the groom village) as one of the big groom families who also has the responsibility to take care of the bride now in the same place.3,5

In the last steps, the markobar was coming from the bride's big family. It was started by the aunts from her mother's side and then the aunts from her father's side. The expression informs about the bride's habit, especially her weakness, such as not cooking or not good at cleaning the house.6,7 Therefore, they hoped the groom's family understood and was patient with her condition, even though they wanted to teach the bride more than they did. This speech more as politeness saying than the truth. On her leaving, the bride is equipped with:

• 1)

  Amak lapis (mat).

• 2)

  Custom cloth.

• 3)

  Bulang (goods).

• 4)

  Rolled pillows/wrapped with complete custom mats with its pillowcase.

• 5)

  The wedding bed and accessories, mats, pillows and the bedding.

• 6)

  Plates, bowls, and other kitchen utensils.

• 7)

  Abit sahulindang bonang (clothes).

The set of markobar in mangalap boru is local wisdom in the Mandailingnese wedding ceremony. Local wisdom is indigenous knowledge or local genius of a society derived from making peace and improving community welfare.8,9 Local wisdom can be local knowledge, local skill, local intelligence, local resources, local social process, local norms, and local customs. Moreover, local wisdom will be the source of character building for the younger generation to create a generation that craves welfare improvement through hardworking, discipline, loving education, loving health, loving cooperation, loving gender management, loving cultural conservation, and creativity caring for nature.10 It will also create a generation who always craves peace through the character of good manners, honesty, loyalty, being harmonious and peaceful, being committed, positive thinking, and always grateful.11

The speech in mangalap boru session was a promise, a statement to convive the bride, the bride's family, and the women in the room when this markobar was conducted. The performance of the markobar performers has an important role in strengthening the bride verbally and nonverbally.12 Humans are creative in expressing their ideas, thoughts, and feelings in literal and nonliteral. It is also because every sign is produced has meaning and indexicality.13 The way the performer perform markobar in mangalap boru is unique and accepted in Mandailingnese. The language used is fundamentally multimodal. Multimodal includes body movement, facial expression, face and gaze, and also gestures. All of them have meanings.14,15

Through the mangalap boru session, families and women will experience the advice manifested in their traditions. Helping each other is one of their way of life and strengthen each other. Helping each other is thought to affect neural networks and strengthen positive traits in humans.8,16

In Mandailingnese, mangalap boru is a part of the wedding ceremony, which must be conducted as customary provisions. The expertise in doing markobar to convince the bride (especially), the women, and the bride's family is local wisdom in Mandailingnese to solve the problem of sadness to leave the family (for the bride) and to release a daughter (for the bride's family). However, the moment to release what we have before and turn to the new situation, it is not an easy thing, therefore, to strengthen the bride and women including those who are married and those who are about to get married, markobar in mangalap boru session was occurred to solve this problem.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.