Regard for our language

Regard for our language

The adoption of and adherence to one national language is one of the founding principles of the Republic of Indonesia. Since well before the declaration of independence, dedicated patriots have worked tirelessly to spread and improve the use of Bahasa Indonesia, which is one of the corner stones of the unity of the Indonesian people. It seems a tragic irony, therefore, that the Indonesian Real Estate Association refused to respect Indonesia's national language until it had been asked to do so by no less than 27 governors and three cabinet ministers. The association's members have been asked to change the foreign, mainly English, names of their real estate developments, notably their housing complexes, to Indonesian ones. The same request was made earlier by Jakarta's Governor, Surjadi Soedirdja, but apparently his call fell on deaf ears.

Disrespect for the national language is not limited to property developers. Even government officials have shown a lack of care. But against this troubling backdrop, a prominent property tycoon has now announced his readiness to change the English names of his real estate holdings to Indonesian ones. The businessman, Ciputra, who owns Indonesia's largest real estate company, has stepped forward to set a good example. Owners of other residential estates and commercial centers seem to believe that the Indonesian language is less prestigious and less attractive to customers than foreign languages. They have named their buildings accordingly.

While such scorn for the national language can also be found elsewhere, real estate developments deserve special attention because of the powerful demonstration effect which the foreign naming of such projects has. In sports the national language has suffered the same fate, with English-language sports terms being considered, for some reason, to be more appropriate than their Indonesian-language equivalents.

In the realm of government we often hear officials using alien terms such as operasionalisasi" or pipanisasi. This improper and regrettable conversion of English words with the suffixes "-tion" and "-ation" is no less than a corruption of the Indonesian language. Because our people are still so used to traditional thinking, ordinary citizens tend to imitate every example given by officials or those whom they believe to be more educated. And so we often come across distorted English expressions, such as Zet Pump, Cervice Station or Intirior Decoration, in place of "jet pump", "service station" and "interior decoration".

The confusion might not have reached its current disturbing level if officials were able to refrain from making lengthy, grammatically incorrect pronouncements in television broadcasts. Ironically, many educated members of our society who are used to making long statements seem to hate long Indonesian words and phrases. They "solve" the problem by haphazardly transforming the offending expressions into acronyms, many of which are then displayed in public places. In the 1990s, chaotic language use seems to be a mark social status in Indonesia: the more ungrammatical, twisted and incorrect a person's speech is, the more sophisticated they are taken to be.

The reigning linguistic anarchy may be partly rooted in our people's ambition to master a foreign language, especially English. Since few Indonesians can do it well, foreign-language expressions are mixed with Bahasa Indonesia in a very disorderly manner.

Few people seem to understand that the point of mastering a language is not to gain a status symbol, but to acquire a means of communication and, in Indonesia's case, unification.