Freedom of speech means just that
Aida Greenbury, Contributor, Jakarta
I am sick of the so-called nationalists relaying their biased criticism about Indonesian people who prefer English to Bahasa Indonesia in their daily communication.
So tell me, what's wrong with using English in this multiracial country? Is there something terribly wrong about the Queen's language? As long as those people use the language properly and their reasons to use it, so what?
Even they would have to admit that Bahasa Indonesia is limited, not very flexible, its initial vocabulary is very basic and recently to catch up with more modern language development, it has derived words from foreign languages, mainly English.
That is why it's ironic that if an Indonesian converses in English in a public place, he or she will be stamped as a non- nationalist and arrogant, but if an Indonesian speaks say, Javanese, in a public place, would they get the same flak?
No, because Javanese is not a foreign influence. It's a tad similar to Soeharto's past move of urging Indonesian businesspeople to use Indonesian words to describe their business while he himself spoke a Bahasa Indonesia with heave Javanese influences.
In the past, I was responsible for a gastronomic section in an Indonesian edition of an international lifestyle magazine. I had to write in Bahasa Indonesia. One night I was invited to attend a chef's table gathering in a restaurant in one of Jakarta's boutique hotels. With a tiny notebook on my lap, I savored the food served in front of me, thinking how the hell I'd explain the flavor in Bahasa Indonesia.
I wanted to write: "The lingering flavor of Caesar Salad Soup in my mouth gave a sensational zest of velvety yet crunchy coz leaves and anchovy." Try translate that into Bahasa Indonesia without using the word kriuk-kriuk (crunchy) and the lame rasa enak (enak is the obligatory Bahasa Indonesia translated word for delicious, tasty, palatable and one hundred other English expressions for delicious).
Basically, enak means nice.
Without belittling the national language, people who are fluent in both English and Bahasa Indonesia understand how the Malay-based language is sometimes a bit impractical to use. On a lot of occasions I find myself trying to describe something in Bahasa Indonesia and end up using a dozen words while I can describe the same thing in English in just two. Like a family tree? Intellectually challenged? Hanky-panky?
I used to work with a New Zealander who was in Indonesia long enough and spent most of his time learning the language from bar girls. Of course, he thought he spoke the language really well. When he spoke, he ended all of his Bahasa Indonesia sentences with "dong".
One day he called me and started to explain something in Bahasa Indonesia. I quickly had to drop my IQ a few points to try to understand what he meant. At the end, I told him to stuff his gibberish and explain the situation again to me in proper English. He was offended and thought I was an arrogant wench. Served him right -- he gave Bahasa Indonesia a bad name.
I am not being arrogant at all here. There's another expression: if you have a Porsche, why would you drive a Toyota? What I mean is that if you have found the easiest method to express yourself, why choose the more difficult one? It's just the matter of practicality.
It has nothing to do with nationalism or arrogance or with the "Oh, I have been abroad, I speak English" attitude, although I have to admit that sometimes some overseas-graduated Indonesians do have that "cleverer than thou" tendency.
Bahasa Indonesia has been declared Indonesia's national language. But every Indonesian still has the right to use other languages to communicate, to suit their purposes. We can speak Javanese, Sundanese, Papuanese, Chinese, English, Dutch, Tarzan or any other language whenever we want to, when it's proper.
By using languages other than Bahasa Indonesia, an Indonesian can't be criticized as someone who has less nationalism than one who speaks perfect Bahasa Indonesia all the time. For ultimately it is their right and choice about how to communicate.