Loanwords: Imperialism or modernization?
By Setiono
JAKARTA (JP): In commemorating this year's Language and Literature month which falls in October, Minister of Education and Culture Juwono Sudarsono stated that there was an excessive use of foreign language by attendants of the ongoing general session of the People's Consultative Assembly.
He then strongly urged the National Center for Language Development (Pusat Pembinaan Bahasa Indonesia) to immediately find the Indonesian equivalent for the foreign words used.
During the New Order era, the invasion of the English language was perceived by many as a new form of colonialism. They argued that borrowing from Western languages might cause linguistic segregation between the elite and the common people.
Furthermore, they contended that new lexical terms of bahasa Indonesia should be derived from Sanskrit and Arabic, as the Malay language has done throughout its long history of borrowing. Such borrowing would maintain Indonesian traditions and culture, and promote feelings of nationalism among Indonesian people.
Such a reflection of the spirit of nationalism has urged central authorities to prohibit the use of all English words employed mainly on billboards, in shopping center names, buildings, and companies.
Such attitudes toward Western languages, especially English, encouraged Indonesian language specialists to use Sanskrit, which is used primarily in Indonesian national and political life.
It is important to note that Indonesia's political and military leaders deem the era of Buddhist and Hindu influence as not only a representation of Indonesian culture but also the mark of the zenith of Indonesian political power in Southeast Asia. Therefore, words stemming from Sanskrit command considerable respect as legacies of the powerful kingdoms and empires of Indonesia's past.
In addition, many newly-coined terms from Sanskrit have been increasingly used, particularly in the political domain as the symbol of the nation state, and are intended to rubber-stamp the legitimacy of the leaders' power.
The use of Sanskrit terms dealing with the Indonesian political sphere include Saptamarga (the seven pledges of the Indonesian army), Pancasila (the five principles of Indonesia's ideology), dwiwarna (the two colors of the Indonesian flag), Bina Graha (the office housing the meetings of the president and his ministers) and Graha Purna Yuddha (the building of the veterans), to mention a few.
The influx of foreign languages, particularly English loanwords or borrowing, has so far increased significantly and uncontrollably in various domains such as in politics, economics, commerce, the mass media, government administrations and higher education.
The crucial question here is, does such flourishing borrowing indicate that we have been linguistically colonized? Is it always possible to substitute all the established foreign words into bahasa Indonesia? If it is possible, is it preferable? And does the use of English by Indonesians portray a lack of nationalism?
Linguistically, we should not be embarrassed to admit that bahasa Indonesia is undergoing a "lexical crisis", and it sounds that the importation of words from foreign languages is badly needed so as to suffice the semantic field of bahasa Indonesia.
Joan Rubin, in 1977, argued that there are three motivating factors as to why language borrowing occurs. There are linguistic motivations, which include changes in a language for the purpose of improving communicative efficiency, semi linguistic motivations, which include changes in a language for improving communication for social, political, or economic purposes and extra linguistic motivations, which include furthering social political causes by focusing on language problems.
In addition, the frequent occurrence of English borrowings in bahasa Indonesia is inevitable as they cannot be appropriately substituted by ordinary words in bahasa Indonesia. Therefore, such political terms as provokasi (provocation), politisi (politician), delegasi (delegation), and revolusi (revolution) are necessarily borrowed because no immediate equivalence in bahasa Indonesia can be found to replace them.
Another factor motivating Indonesian society to adopt English is concerned with "euphemistic" purposes. There is a tendency among Indonesians to substitute existing bahasa Indonesia words with English since the latter has finer connotations than the former. Accordingly, many adopted English words such as asisten (assistant), komisi (commission), and "ex-" as in ex-presiden (ex-president) are frequently employed instead of the respective Indonesian words pembantu, upah, and bekas, which are considered coarse in the community.
Language is a social phenomenon and therefore the process of language borrowing is not solely determined by linguistic conditions alone, but is also influenced by the attitude of speakers of a given language community. If speakers of the recipient language show a positive attitude towards the donor language and its community, borrowing is more likely to occur.
It is thus ironic to forcibly substitute the established English words into Bahasa Indonesia because the Indonesian community has a positive attitude toward English. This attitude is obviously reflected in the third principle of word-coining policy, which stipulates that in case of no appropriate terms for the borrowed words in bahasa Indonesia or its language family, an indigenous or local language, the terms can be taken from a foreign language.
From a sociolinguistic perspective, many politicians and educated people are motivated to use English words to accentuate their roles as modern political leaders and to mark the group in their speech, particularly when talking with other educated interlocutors. In other words, they prefer to use English as a means to display their social status as a member of the modern educated elite.
The prevalent use of English can interestingly be seen in the Indonesian mass media. Such a phenomenon is driven by the nature of the work of journalists and those who present news, commentary and advertisements to the public, which requires the immediate understandings and responses from their interlocutors or readers.
Thus, spontaneous utterances containing clusters of words representing thoughts, ideas, and references from various sources and spheres of life are common in journalistic language.
Accordingly, they do not always have the leisure to express their thoughts in well-chosen and accurate words in bahasa Indonesia. The tendency here is to borrow or adopt words or terms that do not exist in a particular language and even to replace existing words that are no longer felt to be accurate.
In conclusion, the process of foreign language borrowing in Bahasa Indonesia, either spoken or written, should be viewed as an interesting and natural language phenomenon and as a means to develop and eventually to enrich the lexicon of bahasa Indonesia. On the other hand, cultivating chauvinistic and sentimental attitudes against foreign languages is inconceivable as we enter the next millennium, which is characterized by advanced science and technology.
The writer is a lecturer at the English Department of the Faculty of Education, Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta.