Indonesian and English

No one can deny that English is by far the most important international language at the present time. It is an extremely rich language, embodying as it does a huge vocabulary and a highly developed semantics. This has been brought about not only by heavy borrowing of French and Latin words following the Norman conquest, but also through extensive linguistic refinements that English underwent during the 17th and 18th centuries.

However, James Richard's comment (The Jakarta Post, June 12, 1996) that "...Welsh, like Indonesian, is a strictly limited language, which cannot cope with modern world conditions without incorporating a large number of English words" is I think somewhat misleading or tendentious in part. It is true that in spite of the occasional periods of recovery, the Welsh language has on the whole declined in the past 500 years or so. In fact, out of the present Welsh population of nearly three million people, only 14 percent of them speak Welsh (and English) while the remaining 86 percent speak only English. Indeed, with English continuing to encroach, it seems inevitable that Welsh too will eventually languish as has already happened to the Scottish Gaelic language.

On the contrary, the Indonesian language and its Malay predecessor has proved to be a growing and expanding language in the past several centuries. It may be recalled that during the 15th century to 19th century, Malay developed into a classical literary language in the Malaccan Sultanate and the Riau-Johore Kingdom, and at the same time became the most important lingua franca in the whole of the Nusantara archipelago. Subsequently, from approximately 1850 onward, the language was further developed and promoted by mainly West Sumatran writers, linguists and journalists until it was finally adopted as the basis of Bahasa Indonesia in 1928.

In contrast to Welsh, Bahasa Indonesia is now spoken by more than 85 percent of almost 200 million Indonesians throughout the country, not to mention 24 million speakers of Malay in Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore and southern Thailand. It is therefore far from "a strictly limited language" as claimed by James Richard, if numerical and geographical limitations were part of what he meant by the word "limited".

To be sure, Bahasa Indonesia today still needs further improvement mainly to reduce the remaining limitation in the vocabulary. The point is, although it has needed to incorporate new words from various sources, as was the case with English centuries ago, its growth potential is incomparably far greater than that of Welsh. Besides, there is no guarantee that English will remain the most predominant international language by the year, say, 2050 or 2100, as other languages may overtake it in some way in the meantime.

With regard to the broadcasting bill currently being deliberated in the House of Representatives, I would suggest that all foreign films or TV serials of which the original language is not English be dubbed entirely into Indonesian, so as to help strengthen the primacy of the language. Some English language films may perhaps remain in their original form, to assist those who want to improve their understanding of English. In any case, the question whether foreign films should be dubbed or not may not be such a big issue after all, since the showing of certain categories of foreign films may be drastically reduced in the future.

MASLI ARMAN

Jakarta