Workers in the field of languages tread new territory (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Jakarta, Indonesia

Workers in the field of languages tread new territory

November 06, 2007
Janika Gelinek, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20071105.R01&irec=0

Once upon a time, Ungan and Aw‚ decided not to go home after working in the
fields. Instead, they stayed by a river and goofed around with a dog.

They were sending the dog to and fro over the water when suddenly stone rain
came down, turning them into stones. And their crime? They did not come home
and make fun of a dog.

The story could have been lost had Italian linguist Antonia Soriente from
the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Jakarta not gone
and documented Oma Longh and Lebu' Kulit languages in Malinau and Bulungan
regency in Eastern Kalimantan.

Oma Longh and Lebu' Kulit, in which the story above was narrated, are just
two of the endangered languages in Indonesia, spoken only by a few thousand
people in Malinau and Bulungan.

"When you look at what is happening around you, you see languages dying on a
large scale, especially in the eastern part of Indonesia such as Papua and
the Maluku islands," said Uri Tadmor of the Jakarta Field Station.

Established in 1999 by Uri Tadmor and David Gil, the Jakarta Field Station
started off by collecting data on child language. In collaboration with the
Jakarta Atma Jaya Catholic University, it is currently hosting about 25
researchers from Indonesia and abroad who are studying Indonesian languages
from the islands of West Sumatra all the way to Papua.

Indonesia has around 700 languages, but the widespread use of Bahasa
Indonesia has pushed many of those languages to the brink of extinction,
placing the national language on a par with English, Spanish and French as
"killer" languages.

According to Tadmor, there are many reasons why languages in the country are
facing extinction, including people's low level of respect for indigenous
languages.the speakers themselves don't attach much importance to their own
languages," said Tadmor, adding that the children of inter-race couples
tended to speak only Bahasa Indonesia.

"Indigenous languages are also not used in the education system, and thus
their survival is neither financially nor politically supported," Tadmor
said.

In theory, any indigenous language can be taught in a state elementary
school. But in reality, schools usually offer only Javanese, Sundanese and
Balinese, and rarely would these be the primary language of instruction.

"It is totally meaningless to the kids and the kids hate it," Tadmor said.

According to Tadmor, there is not much hope the situation will be reversed
as these languages are generally considered not worth keeping.

"It's a vicious circle. People who speak a small indigenous language come to
look down on their language, because there is no official recognition of
it," said Tadmor, adding that only non-nationals had come here to work with
indigenous communities.

The researchers at the field station are studying how languages cross,
enrich and endanger each other, with many of them focusing on endangered
languages.

"Languages reflect a view of the world. They are an essential component of
the living heritage of humanity, therefore they belong to the intangible
cultural heritage that needs to be safeguarded," Italian linguist Antonia
Soriente said.

"Languages are vehicles of value systems and of cultural expressions and
they constitute a determining factor in the identity of groups and
individuals. They transmit knowledge, values and collective memory and play
an essential role in cultural vitality."

A book Soriente carefully edited - Mencaleny & Usung Bayung Marang - a
collection of Kenyah stories in Oma Longh and Lebu' Kulit languagesis a
first in more than one sense. Not only have these stories never been
translated into Indonesian or English, they have not even been written
down.

In order to give access to the Kenyah stories of Ungan and Aw‚ or the clever
Mp‚ and her stupid husband Buzu, Soriente had to develop a new orthographic
system for the entirely oral languages.

"Linguists are not really social workers. We are not activists who try to go
to the field and say, hey, you need to speak your language. But we want to
raise awareness of linguistic diversity and give something back to the
community and some tools with which, if they want to, they can help their
language to survive", says Soriente.

When the book was published last year it was first sent to the communities
that had been involved in the project.

"They were quite startled to see that something had emerged, that their
language had been written down and that it was written next to Bahasa
Indonesia and English. They said, `Oh, now we can study English through our
language!'"

During Soriente's visit, the Malinau regent made for the very first time a
speech entirely in the local language of Lebu' Kulit and people also
started using the new orthographic system to send text messages.

"Suddenly they realized there is no law that says you have to use only
Bahasa Indonesian", Soriente said.

Her colleague Betty Litamahuputty has had similar experiences. Litamahuputty
participates in a team that has intensively studied the highly endangered
languages of the Maluku islands, among them Kouro, spoken only in five
villages on the island of Seram. Together with linguists from Australia's
Monash University and the local communities, Litamahuputty developed
storybooks in Kouro. Teams were formed among the villagers and sent out to
literally document their language.

"We gave them some cameras and they had to figure out what kind of event
they wanted to document. It was the clove-harvest season. They were taking
pictures of what they thought was important about the harvest. And then
they had to ask the village people or somebody who knew the language how to
say this or that in Kouro. And then they tried to write it down. In this way
they were able to make their own storybooks bilingual, in Malay and the
local language. And that was to show that by very simple means they could
make their own storybook, which they could use in school for instance. Just
with a notebook, a camera and a pen you can make a book about whatever you
want," said Litamahuputty.

Furthermore a story in Malay has been developed by project leader Margaret
Florey about a family going in the woods and working there in a garden, the
"garden story". This story has been "fed" with significant linguistic
structures to find out how speakers from different local communities on
Seram island would translate the same story in their language.

Additionally the linguists made vitality tests in order to see whether the
inhabitants could still communicate in their language or only knew a few
words. As expected it turned out that in many cases elderly people still
had some knowledge of the language, but only a few people were actually
able to have a conversation in it.

Surprisingly the patterns were the same in Christian and Muslim villages,
such as in Allang and Ruta.

"People always thought indigenous languages were more likely to be preserved
in Muslim villages, but instead they had the same curve as the Christian
villages, where we already know that the language has died out," said
Litamahuputty.

A workbook used in workshops with local communities will be published next
year to demonstrate not only how to learn a language, but also how to
gather information from local speakers - how to make sentences, how to
figure out their structure and what the grammar might be like.

"Thus, local communities might take the survival of their language into
their own hands," Litamahuputty said.