Use your language

Use your language

The letter of a reader in The Jakarta Post of April 20, 1995,
just doesn't leave my mind. I feel I had to say something about
Borrowing to enrich. I agree completely in that living languages
are apt to borrow foreign words when there are no words in the
original one with the same connotation. I am not a purist myself,
but I still regard it essential that the borrowed word should be
assimilated within the language over a period of time, before it
can be recognized as part of the language. This indeed will
enrich any language. It's the copy-cat attitude that should be
avoided.

This reminded me of an encounter I had over 50 years ago. It
was during the Japanese occupation when one day a few friends and
I, all between six and 10 years old, were walking on the beach.
Actually we were not strolling but almost running because we had
to pass a Japanese officer's guest-house. And that always scared
us. Suddenly we saw a Japanese officer standing under a coconut
tree right in front of us. I said something in Dutch to my
friends and instantaneously this man, whose name I still
remember, started shouting. We froze, immediately there were
Japanese soldiers all around us. We were herded in a friendly way
into the backyard of the compound across the street. My friends
started crying. I didn't cry but was so petrified that I could
hardly walk. Holding hands with each other, we made it. This man
still yelling and screaming ordered us to stand in a row, five or
six of us. He went into the house to get his samurai. Pulling it
out of the scabbard, he murmured something which sounded like a
prayer. I heard screams from my friends and they leaned heavily
on me. He could have beheaded us right then and there with no one
accusing him of murder.

I had seen many beheaded corpses washed up on the shore so
often and I have seen our people dying on the streets, not from
hunger, but from being beaten with wooden clubs for petty crimes
they committed. One for stealing a banana.

No one was allowed to come near them, they were guarded with
open bayonets. We knew who the masters were. With this in mind I
faced this cruel man, who kept screaming, while pointing his
samurai over and over again at us. His words were gibberish to
me. I didn't understand a word. But I recognized in the stream of
noise "Oct. 28, 1928". His gestures became wilder and wilder.
Then abruptly he transformed himself into a nice man and let us
go.

It took us all a long time to get over the nightmares.

But many, many years later it dawned on me that maybe he was
trying to say something to us. The body language I remember so
well conveyed messages I only now recognize. The overall effect
seemed to say: "Be proud of your own language, no one can have an
identity without his/her own language and without an identity
you'll always be mastered. You proclaimed a language of your own
(no wonder I recognized Oct. 28, 1928). Use it!" Through that
horrible ordeal I learned a lesson.

Or perhaps it wasn't Tsu Tsui who taught me a lesson, perhaps
it is I who likes to think: "Keep Indonesian, Indonesian to
remain Indonesian."

INA SUMARSONO

Jakarta