On pidgin language

Judging from Mr. David Jardine's letter Pidgin language (The Jakarta Post, Nov. 29, 1996), he appears to possess little understanding about the evolvement of languages in general and Bahasa Indonesia in particular.

Every language regularly borrows words from other languages. Yet this year, the Indonesian government is trying to curb the influence of English on the national language, among other things, by forbidding English company names to be used. This has led to remarkable situations, such as the landmark hotel Splendid Inn in Malang, East Java suddenly having to restyle itself as "SI". France went through a similar experience last year and after some hearty laughs, its government had to acknowledge defeat.

For 350 years, a large part of Indonesia was ruled by the Netherlands. Therefore, quite logically, many Dutch words and expressions made their way into the local languages, especially in Bahasa Jawa (Javanese). This is because on Java, the Dutch influence was felt the strongest. Even first president Sukarno's amazing feat of creating one language for this enormous territory with its diversity, however, could not do away with all these Dutch "loan words", especially those used in administration, as well as in the technical field. Yet, with most of these words, the spelling and/or grammatical form was "Indonesianized", which at times may obscure the original somewhat.

What to think of mengintrospeksikannya? Since many Indonesians find it hard to pronounce the letter "t", and many Dutch words ending in "atie" or "itie" still exist, the "t" was dropped as well as the "e", the last letter unnecessary for Indonesian pronunciation anyway. And yes, the word reparatie is used in Holland too, in exactly the same context. But then, has Mr. Jardine ever thought about the influence of the French language on his own, possibly even on his family name?

LUCAS A. OCKEN

Malang, East Java