[lg policy] 'Indonesian gov ’t didn’t approve Hangeul as official writing system'

[Harold Schiffman]

'Indonesian gov’t didn’t approve Hangeul as official writing system'



By Lee Tae-hoon

Bau-bau Mayor Amirul Tamim has denied media reports that the
Indonesian government acknowledged Hangeul as the official writing
system for the Cia Cia tribe, one of the minority ethnic groups of Bau
Bau, a city on the remote island of Buton. “I have neither asked the
central government’s approval nor plan to make such a request in the
future,” he told The Korea Times at a linguistics symposium at Seoul
National University, Thursday. “It is not possible to receive official
acknowledgement for the adoption of Hangeul from the Indonesian
government as Bahasa Indonesia is the official language.”

He noted that he respects Indonesia’s one-people, one-language
policy.The Cia Cia tribe has been under the spotlight for allegedly
having officially adopted Hangeul as its official writing system to
preserve the minority tribe’s language, which exists only in verbal
form. During the forum, Chun Tai-hyun, a professor of Malay and
Indonesian linguistics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, also
criticized the media for creating a false impression that Hangeul has
been successfully transplanted into a foreign ethnic group for the
first time.

“Over the past year, there have been reports that Hangeul has become
Cia Cia’s official alphabet,” he said. “However, it should be noted
that the Cia Cia tribe are also part of Indonesia whose official
alphabet is Roman characters.” Mayor Tamim said he is supportive of
Hangeul education among Cia Cia children as he believes Hangeul is
more suited to transcribe Cia Cia’s dying spoken language “Unlike
other writing systems, the Korean alphabet can accurately record the
pronunciation of the tribal language,” he said.

Tamim said though reports on the official recognition of Hangeul have
rather been misleading, he will continue to encourage the Cia Cia
tribe to use it and make the Korean writing system part of the school
curriculum. “The Cia Cia tribe wants to learn many foreign languages,
including English, Japanese and Chinese,” he said. “By the same token,
it is natural for them to want to learn Korean.” Chun, who first
proposed that Cia Cia learn the Korean alphabet in 2007, said
Indonesia's Constitution mandates all tribal languages to be preserved
in Roman characters for national unity.

Currently, Abidin, who co-authored a Hangeul textbook for the tribe
and the only Hangeul teacher there, teaches the Korean alphabet system
to some 190 students at two elementary schools in Bau-bau. Contrary to
popular belief, he acknowledged that all of his students can write
their tribal language in Roman characters, as Bahasa Indonesia, the
national language, is written in Roman script. “All my students can
write their tribal language, but I believe the Korean alphabet can
help them more accurately write it down than the Latin characters.”

Sugiyono Shinutama, a senior official from the Agency for Language
Development and Cultivation in Indonesia, claimed that the approaches
of both Bau-bau and the central government for preserving and
protecting regional languages have been rather different.
“The local government of Bau-bau takes a pragmatic approach, while the
Language Center takes a secure approach,” he said. “It needs to be
understood that our agency has a task of dealing with language
problems and it is struggling with the shifted cultural values of Cia
Cia society that may be caused by the use of the Korean alphabet.”

He said documenting the Cia Cia language through the adoption of
Hangeul and opening Cia Cia classes using Hangeul in the local
curriculum still needs research and the principles of acceptance from
the users in the community. “The reasoning is very poor, as Hangeul
script in Korean has 40 characters, while the Cia Cia language has
only 27 characters,” he said. Shinutama, however, welcomed Bau Bau
city’s attempt to use Hangeul to preserve the dying language of Cia
Cia, saying the Indonesian government highly regards the local
government’s efforts to protect local languages as national cultural
properties.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/10/116_74158.html

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