Officials mangle our language: Expert

Officials mangle our language: Expert

JAKARTA (JP): While deploring the poor usage of the national
language among government officials, Indonesian language expert
Amran Halim says he is resigned to the fact that the situation
could be difficult to rectify.

"Language usage is more or less embedded in each person. It is
difficult to change or correct it," Amran, the former chief of
the Language Development Center, was quoted by Antara as saying.

It is also a question of attitude, he said during a break in
an ongoing international conference on the teaching of Indonesian
to foreigners in Padang, West Sumatra, yesterday.

The way one uses a language reflects his or her character, and
character is difficult to change, he said.

Many senior government officials, given their frequent public
speeches and appearances in the media, have been criticized for
their poor or incorrect usage of the national language.

The government last year launched a campaign for the proper
and correct usage of the language.

The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Information have
jointly issued an instruction aimed at local administrators, from
governors down to village chiefs, calling on them to always use
correct and proper Bahasa Indonesia.

Amran welcomed the instruction, saying that this could calm
the public criticism often heard about official's poor usage of
Indonesian. He said, however, that ordinary citizens are equally
obliged to heed the appeal. (emb)