Language needs new words to survive (2)

By John Philips

This is the second of two articles on the recent raid on foreign names in Jakarta.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Surely, the Indonesian word pasar (market) has significant cultural implications which are not enhanced by the use of the word swalayan (self-service). Pasar swalayan also does not fully capture the cultural meaning of the English word supermarket, so it fails on two counts.

What these examples point out is that the use of a foreign language to express ideas is a "tricky" business. Take, for example, the report in the newspaper about the Governor's plan to implement this program of linguistic cleaning. According to the reporter, the governor suggested that there would be four steps, "persuasion, prevention, repression, and law". This quote points out the difficulties in using a foreign language to express precise meanings, since I am sure that the newspaper reporter meant to say suppression instead of repression, given the latter's more negative connotation.

Additionally, in my business, we are always struggling with misunderstandings about the meaning of an adopted foreign word used to describe a particular phenomenon, which is qualitatively different in different environments. One example that comes quickly to mind is the word "seminar". I am sure that most readers will be puzzled by this example unless they have attended "seminars" in two different cultures.

In preparing students for overseas study in graduate school in North America, I can testify that the behaviors one expects to see in a seminar in the North American context are not the same as those ones seen in a seminar in Indonesia.

In other words, the same word is used to mean different things, depending on which cultural context it occurs in. The problem arises from cross-cultural contexts, in which my students (and myself) must operate.

In this case, an Indonesian root word, or phrase, which expresses the concept of an Indonesian seminar more accurately, would be far more appropriate for expressing the expectations of the participants, while the word seminar could be reserved for use in the North American context (or vice versa).

Similarly, I know of no English words that simply and adequately represent the concept of gotong-royong (community cooperation). At the root of these problems is "culture". No matter how expressive a language is, or how many words it has, no "foreign" language can ever truly supplant a "native" language without a loss in terms of culture and understanding. This is why the government's program to instill "discipline" in the use of Indonesian language is important.

Which brings us to Prince Charles and his comments about the "misuses" of English by Americans, referred to in part one. Although he disproved his oft repeated claim on CNBC, that he is "not a complete idiot", and in the process embarrassed his hosts, the British Council, on whose behalf he was speaking for their English 2000 initiative, he nonetheless did bring up a related problem that has no easy answer.

This is the problem of the adoption, and spread, of a "world language", and which (or whose) version to use as a "standard".

This problem rests in the very process by which a language becomes more accessible and, therefore, more acceptable to the world at large as a common means of communication.

In order to do so, the language must be expandable, flexible, and accommodating to foreign ideas (and words). The reason for the ascendance of the English language to the "top of the heap" in the mad scramble of possible world languages, is that it has been and continues to be the most accepting.

Indeed, it makes absolutely no sense for the French to rail against the incursion of English into their world since approximately half of all English words come from a common root, Latin.

The problem France has, and so other languages have, in "protecting their turf" is that by protecting one's language from impurities, the language will eventually die from trying to exist in a vacuum.

The pure language will lack the vital nutrients which keep it alive -- new ideas and new words to express them.

In other words, attempting to purify a language will result in that language "starving" to death. I might add that I read the other day that someone from Malaysia was complaining about the "poor quality" of bahasa (language) in Indonesian newspapers, which goes to prove that this problem is not a new one here.

In fact, newspaper language is purposively written to be less formal and more common, in order to be accessible to the widest possible audience.

Of course, it is also of no small coincidence that the spread of English was largely a side effect of imperialism with the British (as in the sun never sets...) and then, neo-imperialism with the Americans (as in the invasion of Planet Hollywood).

It is this latter means of language spread that I suspect was the intention of both Governor Surjadi and Prince Charles to point out, along with the fact that all languages need to retain some standards, rules, and conventions.

If a language loses these, it loses its comprehensibility. In other words, a language can not only fail to express adequately cultural differences, but it can also be too accepting of foreign influences, so that it loses the power to communicate accurately, as in the seminar example.

Just as a child will combine all the colors in a paint box, and end up with black, a language that accepts too much from other languages and cultures (allowing each one to express itself uniquely, based on the needs of that particular culture) is in danger of "blacking out" (i.e., becoming obscured by the many "colors" mixed together and therefore, incomprehensible).

Alternatively, widely differing variations of acceptable English, which currently may be thought of as one language (English) with many dialects, may become many different languages like spoken "Chinese".

So, the necessity for a language to retain a common core is all too apparent, but it doesn't solve Prince Charles's problem as to "whose" language will set the standard?

Unfortunately, for Prince Charles and, perhaps, the rest of us as well, language flows to power. And, while in the past, power came "from the end of a gun", now it comes from a rectangle box, either a television or computer screen. Our entire world is not just electrified through it, but also vectored, laser-guides, macro and micro proselytized, RAMmed and RAPped, digitalized, synchronized, analyzed, and finally, homogenized and sanitized.

If the trend continues, we are all likely to be speaking like the MTV generation, in a polyglot language which is constantly changing without any fixed point of reference.

In other words, PC you'd better get PC, do ya hear what I'm saying, tune in, turn on, and drop into the Internet groove tube and catch that wave, so you too can surf on the electronic highways and byways, before it's like too, you know, late man, and all I can say is "Hasta la vista, Baby!"

Or as the man himself would say, "Beware the Ides of March", and not to mention "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune".

John Michael Philips is an educator specializing in cross- cultural communication and language issues currently working in the University of Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta for CIPP/WUSC.