Guarding Indonesian

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