W. Java government strives to promote use of Sundanese

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Lia Amalia, an official at the West Java Tourism and Culture Office, has been bringing an Indonesian-Sundanese dictionary to work for the past two weeks.

She brings the aid because she is obliged, along with fellow civil servants, to speak Sundanese at the office -- in traditional costume -- every Friday.

Each of the female employees wears the kebaya matched with long pants, while the men wear long-sleeve taqwa shirts and batik motif bendo head-dresses.

With more than 400 people dressed up, the overall effect is like a wedding party -- but without the bride, the groom and, unfortunately, the customary banquet.

"We only wish to preserve the Sundanese language we have inherited from our ancestors," office head Idjudin Budhyana said in Bandung recently.

Budhyana, whose office is spearheading the correct use of Sundanese, said the language and culture Fridays were his concept; a way to preserve the use of the language that was in decline among the area's youth.

To show he is serious about the language, Budhyana fines his middle and top-ranking staff Rp 1,000 (10 U.S. cents) for each word not spoken in Sundanese on Fridays.

The guidelines for the day were drawn up at the end of January and implemented on Feb. 4 after employees were familiarized with the program a week before.

Budhyana had selected several Sundanese literature degree holders as referees to oversee the correct use of the language.

The regulations, he said, were not new. The West Java provincial administration had originally come up with the concept in 1996, but programs had only been applied to primary school children to date.

"It is not fair that it is just children who are forced to learn the language. We, the older generation, haven't set a good example about the use of correct Sundanese," Budhyana said.

Lower-ranking employees with salaries below Rp 1 million a month were against the guidelines during the familiarization week as they said the penalty was too high for them.

Eventually, a compromised was reached where only upper echelon officials spoke formal Sundanese, while other employees were required to speak casual Sundanese and wear traditional clothing.

On the Friday morning the regulation was first put into effect, requests for leave detailing various excuses piled up on Budhyana's desk.

"In fact, during a meeting, an employee suddenly complained of stomachache and asked for permission to go to the toilet several times," he said laughing.

Grammatical mistakes regularly occurred despite the fact that a majority of the employees at the office are native Sundanese and fluent in their mother tongue.

In a monthly discussion which coincided with the induction of the policy, referees collected Rp 32,000 from higher-ranking officials who committed mistakes during the 30-minute meeting.

Budhyana, a native Sundanese, conceded that it was not easy to speak correct Sundanese.

The most common mistake was inserting foreign words into conversation, such as, input, which should be stated as lebetan.

An official at the tourism office, Dedi S. Warmana, who speaks Sundanese to his wife and children daily, also finds it hard to speak "correct" Sundanese.

"The Sundanese language uses a hierarchic system. A meaning of a word is different when spoken to an older person, a friend, a younger sibling or even to an animal," said Dedi who had been fined Rp 3,000 on two occasions.

Although Dedi was skeptical of the programs effect in the long term, he believed it was a positive first step in preserving the Sundanese culture.

"If every civil servant in West Java is obliged to speak Sundanese on certain days of the week, and they take this habit home with them, the impact will be significant," he said.

According to the office, only 30 percent of West Java's youth spoke grammatically correct Sundanese.

Budhyana hopes other government agencies in West Java, including the governor's office, will adopt his rules in the future.

The plan had already received support from Governor Danny Setiawan, he said.