Indonesian and English

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