[lg policy] Indonesia: In support of Local Languages (Zentz)

[Harold Schiffman]

Amid the fervent promotion of the English language in the Indonesian
context, Lauren Zentz revives memories of preserving the wealth of
Indonesia’s local languages spoken throughout the country.

She seems to convey the message that it is a must to learn English in
this globalized world, but learning this language shouldn’t
necessarily be at the cost of one’s native languages.

Citing the long-established national language policy, Zentz reminds
Indonesians to love their local languages, use their national language
(Indonesian), and study foreign languages, including English.

An anthropologist and professor of lingustics from the University of
Houston in the US, Zent first came to Indonesia in 2008 and learnt
Indonesian through the Consortium for the Teaching of Indonesian and
Malay (COTIM), which was later renamed the Consortium for the Teaching
of Indonesian (COTI).

In the same year, piqued by the uniqueness of Indonesian cultures and
indigenous languages, she accepted an offer from UNESCO to help
develop functional literacy in Kampung Cibago, West Java.

“Without thinking further, I accepted the program, which was orgnaized
by the SIL [Summer Institute of Linguistics] to assist children in
developing functional literacy both in Sundanese and in Indonesian,”
Zentz said in an interview.

Out of the large number of Indonesia’s ethnic languages, Zentz devotes
her attention mostly to Javanese, which she finds fascinating in terms
of its level of formalities (Ngoko and Kromo). To study this local
language, Zentz often visits cities in Central Java such as Surakarta
(Solo), Salatiga and Yogyakarta, where she stays and engages with
native Javanese families.

Her passion in researching the condition of language ecologies in
Indonesia is reflected through her doctoral project Global Language
Identities and Ideologies in an Indonesian University Context, which
explores identity and motivation among undergraduate English majors in
Central Java and emphasizes the impacts of global language policy
trends and state language policies, specifically on Indonesia’s public
education system.

Zentz’s other published work includes The porous borders of language
and nation: English in Indonesia, which she published in International
Journal of the Sociology of Language.

Despite being unable to converse in Javanese, Zentz says she knows a
few words of ngoko and kromo, and makes the use of these dialects a
topic of her research.

“In the course of my time in Central Java, it became apparent that the
label indicating the Javanese language — bahasa Jawa — either did not
represent a ‘language’ but bahasa sehari-hari, perhaps best translated
as ‘daily talk’, that everyone spoke with each other every day, or it
was a very sophisticated language that was too difficult for even
local residents to learn”.

“When I asked young adults in the community if they could speak
Javanese, the general answer was no. When I asked for clarification,
pointing out that they spoke Javanese every day all the time, the
answers I got back indicated that ngoko was not a language — it’s just
daily talk — and Javanese, implicitly kromo, is a language that is
more or less learnable — mostly less learnable — but it would be super
cool if they could speak it”.

As Zentz’s research has revealed, what concerns her most in the
context of globalization is the shifting use of Javanese among
youngsters, either to Indonesian and English. Yet, Zentz is unwilling
to speculate that this shift is a sign of language disappearance.

“Although most of the respondents in my study prefer to use either
Indonesian or English to kromo, it doesn’t mean that kromo is
disappearing. I argue it is community interactions and spaces where
kromo inggil is spoken and passed on to younger generations that are
decreasing, rendering kromo forgettable,” she said.

While citizens were encouraged to love their local languages, their
abilities to speak them were currently shifting as, in this instance,
high registers move into the past along with their proto-modern
cultural forms, and ngoko lives on in the present sometimes invisibly,
sometimes unworthy of acknowledgement as a language per se, she went
on.

To Zentz, researching Indonesia’s local languages along with the
language policy that regulates these languages tells her not only of
their unique characteristics as living languages, but also the
identities and ideologies of their users. In so doing, she said we
could capture the real ideas of what language ecologies were.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/07/11/lauren-zentz-in-support-local-languages.html

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