Loan words

I can't take much eksepsi to a couple of points made by Lucas Ocken in response to my letter about the pidginisasi of Bahasa Indonesia. Yes, my family name was originally French (although it is actually Scottish) and yes, every language has loan words: It's hardly a matter of surprise that Indonesian incorporates some Dutch loan words.

However, the point is that, as anyone here can see, the current fad for English loan words is bringing in an avalanche (a French loan word!) of new words in some absolutely visible examples; retribusi and reparasi are just two of them.

A week or so back, I saw some young people wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Reuni ...". They presumably were going to a reunion of some sort, of their alumni perhaps. But Bahasa Indonesia has words to cope with this: Temu, which means "to meet", would form the basis of an adequate and workable word, would it not?

What seems to be happening is that English has a faux- glamorous asosiasi in their minds. It's chic to use English, even if you not only can't use it correctly, but get it horribly wrong. People will speak in whatever way they choose, but we don't have to like what we hear or read, and I think retribusi for tarip (yes, another loan word) is just plain daft. More so, registrasi for pendaftaran!

Finally, I'd like to say that Bahasa Indonesia seems to have caught this rash much more than Bahasa Malaysia, when the logical conclusi would be for Malaysia, as an ex-British colony, to be succumbing to the infeksi.

DAVID JARDINE

Jakarta