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)