'Bahasa' Using: A Language of its own

BANYUWANGI (JP): Despite early opposition from several linguists and proponents of the Javanese language, Banyuwangi's local language, with the name Using, finally won the battle, with an agreement to slowly remove Javanese from classrooms in the regency.

"It is my 20-year obsession to see the Using language taught in classrooms in Banyuwangi," Hasan Ali, linguist and writer of "Guidelines to the Using Language Spelling System", published in 1995.

A pilot project for teaching the Using language in the Banyuwangi regency was introduced in the 1997/1998 academic year at nine elementary schools in the Glagah, Kabat and Rogojampi districts. The next stage will see teaching of the language in 13 out of the total 21 districts. The ultimate goal is to have the language taught in all elementary and secondary schools throughout the regency in the beginning of the next century.

According to Ali, the idea of bringing the language into classrooms was inspired by a paper which claimed that the number of speakers of Javanese, much higher than those speaking Using, was declining.

A census carried out in 1990 showed there were 1.45 million people in Banyuwangi regency, and 53 percent of them spoke the Using language.

"If we don't do anything, the same fate will happen to Using," said Ali, who chaired the Blambangan Art Council for more than 20 years. To work toward his dream, he put aside his other project: writing a Using-Indonesian dictionary -- by 1982 Ali had completed entries for 16,000 Using words.

With the help of a friend at Japan's Kyoto University, last year he received financial assistance from the Toyota Foundation to complete the dictionary.

Before the introduction of the new policy, the Using language was always considered to be a dialect of Javanese.

However, people of Banyuwangi believe their language shares the same roots with Javanese, which comes from Old Javanese, but that the two are now actually separate languages in many respects, taking into consideration phonology, morphology, syntax and even different vocabularies.

Several Old Javanese words which do not exist in modern Javanese are still spoken in the Using language.

The most significant difference with Using is that, unlike in Javanese, there is no variation in terms employed when addressing people of different social levels.

Another encouragement for the use of the local language in classrooms came when the education ministry instructed Banyuwangi schools to teach a popular dance, Gandrung, as an extracurricular activity.

"You can not learn Gandrung without learning the language. Because all songs which accompany the dance are in the Using language," Ali said.

In terms of literature, the language has been widely used in both written and oral works.

"The Using oral art in the 19th century was far ahead of Chairil Anwar," Ali said, referring to a leading poet of the 1945 generation who set a new stream in Indonesian literature by introducing a freer form of poetry -- without rhyming lines or regular quatrains (verses of four lines).

Strongly influenced by Malay and Riau literary works, Indonesian poetry before the 1945 generation had a regular number of verses and lines.

"In (the Gandrung song) Podho nonton for example, there are no end-rhymes, or quatrains," Ali said, adding that this freer form of poetry was widely used in several performance styles, such as Gandrung and Seblang.

The Ensiklopedia Indonesia also mentions a literature stream originating from Banyuwangi.

According to the Encyclopedia: "Until the 18th century, there were followers of Hinduism and there was even a stream of literature called the Banyuwangi Stream. For example, Sri Tanjung and Sang Satyawan manuscripts were from that stream. During the Majapahit era, the two stories were very popular because they were carved into the verandah of Penataran temple in Blitar."

Ali said it that two works alone could not be called a separate literary stream. Therefore, he reasoned, there must be more than those two. He said other works may have been destroyed in wars. (Antariksawan Jusuf)