'Indonesian' style in English usage

'Indonesian' style in English usage

It is interesting to note that the letters column of The
Jakarta Post of Sept. 7, 2001 carried opinions from two readers
commenting, respectively, on Indian English and Australian
English. If the name of the country relative to the English
language can identify the distinctive nomenclature corresponding
to the particular native style of the English used, as in the
above two examples, then, by the same token, mention of
"Indonesian" English may be in order.

Although I admit that objections will arise should I venture
to use the term "Indonesian" English, nevertheless from my
observation of the particular trend of usage, as I will explain
later, I am inclined to dub it as "Indonesian" English by way of
local or native style of English.

Michael Swan in his book Practical English usage of ELBS
(English Language Book Society, Oxford) publications remarked
that Arab or Chinese students may find it difficult to use
English conjunctions correctly. Among the typical mistakes cited,
he gave as an example the expression, "As you know that I work
very hard". In such construction, it is wrong to use the relative
pronoun "that".

But the use of "that" after the conjunction "as" is very
commonly used by Indonesians, its counterpart in Indonesian being
the expression, "Seperti ... bahwa".

Also, the use of "conducive" has commonly started to emerge in
its independent or detached form in the Indonesian usage. So it
is common for Indonesians to say, "The situation is not
conducive." The use of "conducive" should be attached to the
preposition "to", so that the correct use should read, "conducive
to", as for instance, "Fresh air is conducive to health".

Further, in my observations I found another feature of
"Indonesian" English, in the way the conjunction "whereas" is
used to correspond to the Indonesian bahwa, commonly used by
lawyers in opening their written pleadings and court submissions.

In an official notice published by a law office in a
newspaper, it was found that the recitals represented statements
of facts being expounded in a set of paragraphs, each of which
began with the conjunction, "whereas".

When "whereas" is used in the context of a preamble, the
original form in its proper usage should be followed by
provisions of the operative part.

So it is the function of the operative part, preceded by the
concluding phrase "Now, therefore,...", to expound the ending
conclusions.

But in "Indonesian" English, as typified by the published
notice issued by the law firm, the use of the conjunction
"whereas" was irrelevant to both a preamble and an operative part
of the legal announcement. So "whereas" here was just a
translation of the Indonesian conjunction Bahwa, commonly used by
lawyers in phrases when opening their written pleadings,
submitted to the court.

As for the pertinent requirements needed to qualify for the
native style of English, if so recognized at all in the cited
circumstances, it is not so much the typical accent
characterizing the speaking of English that matters. It is rather
the typical use of native expressions derived or originating from
the native language and then conveyed or transmitted in English,
as I cited in the above examples, that will account for the
typology of the so-termed native style of English.

Although people will object to the idea, the very facts of the
typical "Indonesian styles" of English nonetheless are there in
usage.

S. SUHAEDI

Jakarta