New dictionary

There was news from Washington (Suara Merdeka, July 22, 1999) that St. Martin Press USA will soon publish the Escarta World English Dictionary (not British/American/Australian or black English but "world" English).

Many slang terms and "exotic" words will be included in the dictionary, such as "dinkum" (genuine), tangi (internment/burial of a Maori), cack-handed (awkward), bezodee (confuse), bangbelly (a slice of fried dough), toenodering (political meeting), black stump (doomsday), Monicagate. For the word "nigger", the reader is cautiously reminded that this term is racialistic. The dictionary also includes "stealth tower", "smurf", "dead cat bounce", etc.

And now The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is appealing not only to experts (linguists, lexicologists, lexicographers and wordsmiths) but also to the public for submissions as part of the first complete revision since the text was published in full in 1928 (Jules Bell, The Jakarta Post, Aug. 23, 1999).

Oxford University Press also intends to publish its dictionary and updates on the Internet. The complete current second edition of the dictionary, which contains more than 59 million words, will be available online from March 2000 and will include 1,000 new entries.

"Don't be discouraged by any cultural reservations or social concerns for appropriateness, any word, slang or dialect, politically correct or incorrect, is useful..." says Oxford's contribution guide, "Somewhere within Indonesia's rich culture and language where sleeping policemen are speed traps, fire carts are trains and pieces of glass that come back at you are mirrors, there must be equally transcendent contribution to the English language".

Well... it's actually a very good opportunity to promote Indonesians' self-respect through world English besides its benefit to tourism in many aspects: cultures, vernaculars, kinds of plants, vegetables and tropical and edible fruits, etc.

Examples are creese (keris), sumpit/sumpitan, sarong, batik, wayang, gamelan, sruti, sultana, sultan, orangutan, lingsang, rattan, sago, durian, rambutan, jambo/rose apple (jambu), duku, salak, Jambee (Jambi), Jogjakarta etc. have been entered in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, and Borobudur has been entered in the American Heritage Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary, but it is not fair as most of these words were described as coming "from Malay" (not clearly written: "Indonesia") and even in the New Oxford Illustrated Dictionary (page 852) it's written that: "Indonesia,...formerly belonging to the Netherlands; independent since 1949...", and then in Webster's Third New International Dictionary (page 2002) it's written: "Salak is native name in Malaya... the pearshaped pineapple-flavored fruit of a Philippine palm!"

Given all of these, we can urge for the (next) OED to alter and write down that Indonesia obtained independence from the Dutch in 1945 (not 1949), ... etc.

For the sake of Indonesia and tourists' interests we can recommend inclusion in the next OED edition such words as Prambanan (temple), kraton (palace), beksan (Javanese traditional dance), srimpi (Javanese classical dance), dalang (puppeteer), dukun (medicine man), pawang (person with special skills), ajimat (amulet), sesaji (offering), karapan (bull race), reog (masked dance), tortor (Batak dance), ngaben (cremation of the dead in Bali) and many other culturally and spiritually related words from various regions in Indonesia.

M. HADI S.

Purwokerto, Central Java