Bring back our literacy in local dialects

Bring back our literacy in local dialects

Atmakusumah, Jakarta

How many times in a week, or even in a day, is it that I
stumble in a conversation in my own national language, Bahasa
Indonesia.

I realize at such moments that I am unable to finish my
sentence because I could only find the proper words for certain
thoughts in my mother tongue -- the Bahasa Sunda spoken by the
majority of the West Javanese ethnic group -- but which may not
be understood by my companions.

Those particular words only exist in Bahasa Sunda, and most
likely other people have encountered the same difficulty in their
own local languages and dialects, because those languages are
richer in vocabulary than the Indonesian language.

With over 17,000 islands, Indonesia is home to more than 300
ethnic groups comprising 250 languages and dialects. But many of
the languages are no longer spoken fluently by the indigenous
groups, a category that also includes myself and my children.

My wife, by the way, still speaks fluently in both Bahasa
Sunda and Bahasa Indonesia, as well as in Bahasa Jawa, the
language of Central and East Javanese ethnic groups.

Under the national motto Bhinneka Tunggal Ika or "Diversity in
Unity", the culturally diverse country, however, has been
transformed into a politically united entity since the day we
proclaimed independence.

To live in this unitary state -- which was haunted for decades
by the specter of political and territorial disintegration -- we
have been inculcated to learn and speak the national language
rather than our local dialects or ethnic languages, both at
school and in society. In adhering to this, however, we have
gradually lost our cultural heritage -- that is, our literacy in
ethnic languages.

For example, only a very few senior citizens with the ability
to write in Sundanese or Javanese script remain. Media
publications in Sundanese and Javanese have also disappeared
rapidly over only a few decades. I believe this is also the case
with other ethnic languages in other regions.

What does this mean?

It means we are losing, bit by bit, the diversity and
plurality of our precious culture, linguistically and otherwise
-- just as we are losing our indigenous wildlife and hence, our
biodiversity.

Cultures have their own value systems and views on life, and
it is therefore important to maintain pluralism in our national
culture. Being pluralistic, we expect our society to have respect
and a deep understanding of differences, tolerance and goodwill.

It is believed that by recognizing and valuing differences, we
can build a peaceful and sustainable society, Anton Sudarisman,
coordinator of the Indonesian Peace Education Center, wrote in an
Oct. 8 article in The Jakarta Post, titled "Why peace education
is urgent for Indonesia".

JC Kapur, publisher and editor-in-chief of the New Delhi-based
World Affairs-The Journal of International Issues, says that
culture and civilization have often been considered
interchangeable.

Culture is a refined appreciation of the religious traditions,
customs, institutions or aesthetic achievements of a nation or a
group. Without respect for other cultures, a culture of global
harmony with an unexploitative compassionate and humane order
cannot be realized, he wrote in "Transcending the clash of
civilizations" in the New Delhi journal's April-June 2003
edition.

Meanwhile, for the first time ever, an environmentalist,
Wangari Maathai from Kenya, won this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

The chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee, Ole Danbolt Mjoes,
said for the first time, the environment set the agenda for the
prize, and the committee had added a new dimension to peace. The
Nobel committee expanded upon the peace concept to include
environmental issues because it believed that good quality of
life on Earth was necessary to promote a lasting world peace.

"Peace depends on our ability to secure our living
environment," Mjoes was quoted on Oct. 17 as saying by the
Guardian News Service, London.

Because of the increasingly sophisticated and rapid
advancement of communications technology, our lives today are
more easily exposed to other cultures than ever before --
regionally and globally. It seems, therefore, that we should also
add another new dimension to peace by expanding the peace concept
to include the broad issue of cultures, which could certainly
contribute to the promotion of lasting peace in the world.

The writer is a lecturer in journalism at the Soetomo Press
Institute, or the Lembaga Pers Dr. Soetomo, in Jakarta. He is
the 2000 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Journalism, Literature and
Creative Communication Arts.