Sounds the same

Sounds the same

Prof. Sudjoko in a letter to Kompas daily recently said that
the development of the Indonesian language did not have any
definite direction. I think that analysis of the language needs
to be continued.

The formation of Indonesian words derived from a foreign
language is currently based on phonetics (as is the case in
Malaysia) and not on the original meaning of the words. What
happened in Malaysia is that their word baisikal was derived from
the English "bicycle", like reidio has its origin in "radio".

In Indonesia the words fesyen from "fashion" and imel from "e-
mail" have been accepted as standard language, although the
formation of words based on phonetics is really superficial.
Frankly, I think that the words fesyen and imel are coarse.

I hope that our language experts have started to pay serious
attention to the growth of our language by developing a more
substantial and in-depth discourse on word formation. I think the
formation of words from a foreign language into Indonesian needs
to take into account the meaning of the original words.

AMIR SIDHARTA

Jakarta