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