Minister wants bill on language

Minister wants bill on language

JAKARTA: The government is considering a draft of a bill to
protect the national language as well as local languages,
Minister of National Education Bambang Sudibyo said here on
Saturday.

"The Ministry of National Education, through its language
center, is studying the possibility of designing such a bill," he
said after opening a dialog on Indonesian and Chinese cultures at
Jakarta's Atma Jaya University.

The minister said such a bill was necessary amid the current
interactions between Indonesian language and local and foreign
languages.

"I see that the interactions have often hurt the Indonesian
language, which means also hurting our culture. Therefore, we
need to observe this process and how to guarantee that the
interactions can continue in a good way," he added.

Bambang said he was of the view that the present world
environment was a good chance for the Indonesian language to
become a global language.

The proposed bill is also expected to help unite hundreds of
ethnic groups and tribes scattered across Indonesia, he added.

However, he said he would reject the draft if it curbed the
development of foreign languages in the country, such English and
Mandarin, which many Indonesians speak. -- Antara