Guarding Indonesian

I received from one of your readers, a Filipino friend living in Cilegon, West Java, a recent clipping of the "Your Letters" column. With pleasure I read there a translated extract of my letter to the Gatra weekly magazine on the irresponsible habit of certain Indonesians to mix Indonesian with unnecessary "Indonesianized" English words. Irresponsible because these words do not enrich the national language in terms of new meaning or new thoughts.

When we proclaimed Indonesia's independence and fought to defend it, we were freeing not only the country and the people but also Bahasa Indonesia from the grips of the Dutch. The 40- year effort to build Indonesian as a modern national language has met success not by borrowing from foreign languages but by delving deep into the origin of the Indonesian language and its ethnic sister languages.

During the last decade, however, young intellectuals started using hundreds and hundreds of words derived from English like: collusion, conducive, spectacular, primordial, parameter, conflict, quality, response and accommodative. All are ideas or conceptions which earlier were expressed in Indonesian.

The young intellectuals apparently have forgotten or perhaps distrust the ability and flexibility of Indonesian to express any idea or concept. Or they have thrown away a pride in the national language and feeling more comfortable (or believe they sound more intellectual?) when speaking in a borrowed language.

It would be wise to compare ourselves with the Japanese or Thais, both of which were heavily influenced by the presence of thousands of American soldiers. How many of their intellectuals adorn their speech with English words?

Maybe, just maybe, by printing the portion of my letter in your paper, someone was reminded to be proud of his or her national language. Let us master perfect English, but let us speak in perfect Bahasa Indonesia.

CORNELL R.H. TOBING Medan, North Sumatra