National language policy: Problems and reality

National language policy: Problems and reality

Setiono, Jakarta

On Thursday, the nation commemorates Youth Pledge Day. In
1928, 17 years before the country's independence, a group of
Indonesian youths pledged that Indonesia would become one
country, with one nation and one language. During this day,
people often talk about the need to protect the Indonesian
language from foreign influences.

The persistent problem we have been facing in developing the
lexicon of our national language is that there is no general
consensus among language experts as to which languages we should
adopt. Some prefer to use European languages, especially English,
because English is deemed as the language appropriate to modern
science and technology, industry, commerce, the media, and higher
education.

Others, however, prefer to employ Sanskrit, Arabic and other
foreign languages used traditionally in Bahasa Indonesia. This is
motivated by the fact using these languages can maintain
Indonesian tradition and cultures and promote a feeling of
nationalism among the Indonesian people.

Methods for coining new terms from foreign languages such as
English and Dutch into Bahasa Indonesia in the present have
essentially not changed since the Japanese occupation in
Indonesia. They are illustrated in the Indonesian Dictionary,
Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI), which was published in 1996.

The KBBI says there are three ways to coin new words from
foreign languages.

They are: To find the closest Indonesian equivalents, to find
the equivalents from the indigenous languages such as Javanese,
Sundanese, and Maduranese, to mention a few, and to adopt the
European languages into Bahasa Indonesia which can be done in
three different ways: (a) to adopt new words in accordance with
the internal use, (b) to adopt new words due to their common
usage, and (c) to adopt new words by translating them (either
entirely or partially).

This policy, however, is not consistently applied in executing
the planning of language. This particularly true when we observe
many translated housing compound names that do not abide by these
rules. Names such as Bogor Boulevard, Cimacan Valley, and Sahid
Bali Seaside, to mention just a few, were translated into the
ethnic-sounding Adimarga Bogor, Bantaran Cimacan, and Susur Sahid
Bali, respectively. When the policy is implemented, one may find
words such as adimarga, bantaran, and susur do have the standard
Indonesian equivalents jalan raya, lembah, and tepian.

The adoption of local language equivalents for foreign words
such as English may be disadvantageous because words taken from
certain local languages are not known by speakers coming from
other regions.

People coming form Central Java, for instance, might find it
difficult to understand words taken from Sundanese, and thus must
undoubtedly learn the origin of those words.

There is a tendency among language experts to forcibly replace
the established English words, which have been nativized, into
Indonesian words. This results in words and expressions that
sound awkward, uneconomical and are unacceptable among language
users.

The word "effective" and "efficient" might be more acceptably
nativized into efektif and efisien than mangkus and sangkil.
The expressions which have been commonly used, should be
maintained as the way they are, rather than finding awkward
Indonesian expressions masuk bursa and merambah mancanegara, as
proposed by Anton Moeliono. Nobody will use those expressions
since such expressions have not yet accepted by the language
users. Why should we spend extra time finding the new
expressions, while we already have the established and widely
used expressions?

Often using English words puts an extra cognitive load on
language users. The words might seem strange to them, and often
they have recheck the meaning of the translated words to find the
true meanings.

From the linguistic viewpoint, the meanings of English words
are so distinctive that no lexical Indonesian equivalents can
precisely replace them. Thus, though we can find the word suasana
for "nuance" and kekurangan for "deficit", the meanings of the
English words cannot be completely captured by their Indonesian
equivalents.

Language planning hitherto does not seem to have been carried
out systematically and objectively. It essential to emphasize
here that planning manifests in a system, suggesting that any
processes of language planning ought to be addressed in a
systematic way.

At least two criteria should be considered in language
decisions. The first is efficiency, referring to the state of
being easy to learn and use, not being misunderstood, not being
hard to remember, and not being more complicated than necessary.
The second is acceptability, referring to the sociocultural rules
of evaluation.

These two criteria should enable any language planner to make
useful decisions in executing language programs.

The writer is a lecturer at the Atma Jaya Catholic University
and can be reached at setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id