Indonesia hosts Malay seminar, congress

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Malay linguists and experts from Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam will gather in Makassar, South Sulawesi next week to discuss ways to replace foreign language terms with Malay.

Head of Indonesia Language Center Dendy Sugondo told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that Makassar was chosen to host the annual Malay language seminar and literature congress. The aims of the congress would be promoting Malay terms and developing Malay so that it becomes one of the major languages in the world.

"We want to develop Malay so that it supports the national identity of the three countries especially in this globalization era. We also would like to promote the use of local terms to replace many English or other language terms," Dendy told the Post.

Malay is widely spoken as a first language in Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam.

Dendy said that currently Indonesia has 250,000 local terms to replace many foreign terms, but there had been insufficient promotion among the public to use such terms.

"We will launch the new terms dictionary on the first day of the seminar. In the future we will also provide the new terms on the internet to make it easy for the public to access them," Dendy said.

The seminar will be opened by the Minister of National Education Abdul Malik Fadjar.

One of the speakers will be cultural observer Emha Ainun Najib.

Singaporean delegates will attend as observers, which will also discuss cultures that influence the use of language.

Prior to the seminar, there will be a two-day congress on Malay language that will start on Friday.

That will be followed by a two-day congress on Malay literature.

Malaysia hosted the 2001 edition of the annual seminar. Next year's activities will be hosted by Brunei Darussalam.