Native languages threatened with extinction
JAKARTA (JP): Language indicates where you belong. But this might not be true for some, as many of the Indonesian native languages are now at the brink of extinction.
Language experts have highlighted the erosion of native languages and the decreasing number of their users, due to inadequate speaking skills, as well as the impact of technological changes that have affected every field of life.
Noted language expert Anton M. Moeliono of the Indonesian Language Center told a two-day discussion on language and culture at Atmajaya Catholic University here on Tuesday that extinction was inevitable from the time a language lost its function as a communicating tool within society at large.
He stated that there were too many native languages in each region of the archipelago, which made people prefer to use the national language as it was the lingua franca.
But again, Anton said, it depended on the people to choose whether they wanted to conserve their native language or to join the larger crowd so they would not be left behind.
"Most of the native mother tongues, especially in eastern Indonesia, have yet to be affected by technology. Now we have to draw a line between ethnic pride and ethnic necessity," he told The Jakarta Post after a discussion.
"So there are choices to make. To put the extremes: first, join the rest to enter the 21st century, or second, don't change. But, do we really want to see them only as a living museum exhibit?" he remarked.
He said only two Indonesian native languages had more than 25 million users each, namely Javanese and Sundanese. Eleven others had less than 10 million users each, while each of the remaining 300 native languages had between 1,000 to 100,000 users.
The population here is about 210 million.
"If we don't handle this matter carefully, then native languages will only be used in the arts and will no longer be found in daily communications," he said.
Language consultant Helen Miehle from the Bandung chapter of Summer Institute of Linguistics International said in the discussion that many people were ashamed to use their mother tongue in public.
Instead, she said, they chose to speak in Indonesian or English, both of which had larger access to the economic, education and technology fields.
"It's not their fault. People tend to use more prestigious languages, or the national language, to be accepted in the community for their own survival, unless the community itself widely uses the native language," she said.
"But actually, people can only express their deepest feelings most effectively through their mother tongue. The impact, when they are repressed, is that people tend to express themselves violently, using anger instead of communicating their feelings verbally," she added.
Shame, or the feeling of not being accepted are not the only reasons that have led to the disappearance of languages.
She said that many of the native languages in Irian Jaya and Sulawesi only had hundreds or, at most, less than 6,000 users.
Most of the languages had been used for centuries by a group of people living in remote areas where they were isolated from other culture, so the languages themselves had failed to develop.
She explained that there were many indicators of the degree to which a language could be said to be endangered, such as the age of its users, where it was widely used and the affection of the users for the language.
A language could be considered to be at the edge of extinction if it were used only by elders, or if the number of the children in the community using the language had reduced or had become only passive users, meaning that they could understand but no longer use it.
Miehle stated that as an integral part of culture, language had to be passed from one generation to another.
"If a community wants to bequeath its valuable culture to the next generation, then parents should introduce the use of the native language at home. Otherwise, both the language and the culture will vanish," she said.(bby)