The Indonesian Language

THE INDONESIAN LANGUAGE James Sneddon is Head of the School of Languages and Linguistics at Griffith University in Brisbane. A university-level teacher and researcher of linguistics and Indonesian language for over 20 years, he is the author of Indonesian Reference Grammar (1996) and Understanding Indonesian Grammar (2000). TO ANTON M. MOELIONO A TRUE CHAMPION OF THE INDONESIAN LANGUAGE THE INDONESIAN LANGUAGE ITS HISTORY AND ROLE IN MODERN SOCIETY James Sneddon UNSW PRESS A UNSW Press book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © James Sneddon 2003 First published 2003 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Sneddon, James N. The Indonesian language: its history and role in modern society. Includes index. ISBN 0 86840 598 1. 1. Indonesian language – History. I. Title. 499.221 Printer Griffin Press Cover design Di Quick CONTENTS PREFACE 1 1 INTRODUCTION 5 A new language for a new nation 5 A brief history of the language 7 The standardisation and spread of Indonesian 9 Malay outside Indonesia 11 On the name of the language 14 Fallacies and misconceptions 14 The teaching of Indonesian as a foreign language 18 Structure of the book 20 2 MALAY AND THE AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGE FAMILY 22 The Austronesian languages 22 Proto-Austronesian and its descendants 25 The Malayic languages 31 3 OLD MALAY 33 The beginning of Indian influence 33 The Malays and the growth of trade 35 Srivijaya 36 Srivijaya’s power and the spread of Malay 40 The decline of Srivijaya 43 Borrowing from Sanskrit 45 4 THE CLASSICAL MALAY PERIOD 52 The coming of Islam 52 Malacca and its influence 57 Malay in the east 59 The earliest Malay letters 62 Malay literature 65 Munshi Abdullah 71 External influences 72 5 EUROPEAN INFLUENCES BEFORE THE 20TH CENTURY 79 The Portuguese 79 The Dutch and their use of Malay 82 1824: The dividing of the Malay world 86 Moves towards standardisation 87 Newspapers and their influence 89 The influence of van Ophuijsen 91 6 THE 20TH CENTURY TO 1945 93 The situation at the beginning of the century 93 Balai Pustaka 95 Other influences and the emergence of General Cultivated 97 Malay The nationalists 99 The Second Indonesian Youth Congress and the Sumpah 101 Pemuda Why Malay? 103 Alisjahbana and Pujangga Baru 106 The First Indonesian National Language Congress 108 Dutch reaction and the position of Indonesian in 1941 109 The Japanese period 111 7 LANGUAGE PLANNING 114 The early days of planning 114 Components of planning 119 Diglossia and the language situation in Indonesia 121 Conservatives vs progressives 125 Spelling reform 127 The Pusat Bahasa 128 Alisjahbana vs Moeliono 130 Cultivation and dissemination 132 Language problems in the education system 137 Bahasa pejabat 139 Elite language and alienation 140 The advice industry 142 8 BEYOND PLANNING: OTHER INFLUENCES ON THE 144 LANGUAGE The influence of Sukarno 144 Acronyms and other abbreviations 145 The mass media 149 Borrowing from other languages 152 Jakarta Malay and informal Jakartan Indonesian 153 The influence of Javanese 156 The influence of Dutch 160 The influence of Sanskrit on the modern language 167 9 THE INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH 173 The status language 173 The role of the mass media in disseminating English 177 Areas of borrowing 180 The assimilation of borrowings 183 Excessive borrowing from English 185 Affixes 188 Loan translations 191 Grammatical innovations 192 Reaction to English influence 194 10 REGIONAL LANGUAGES AND THE SPREAD OF INDONESIAN 196 The languages of Indonesia 196 Knowledge of Indonesian 199 Lingua francas and language shift 203 The spread of Indonesian 205 Efforts to maintain regional languages 207 The position of Javanese 210 The present state of Indonesian 212 The future of Indonesian 213 ENDNOTES 218 REFERENCES 227 INDEX 236 PREFACE This book discusses the history of the Indonesian national language and its role in the modern state. Although most of the topics dealt with are also covered in other publications, often in more detail, there has never been a unified book-length historical and social study of the language. The book aims to be of interest to non-specialists and those with a general interest in the language. It therefore avoids lengthy and detailed consideration of specific topics. Much of the material is drawn from other works, and these are identified for readers wishing to pursue par- ticular matters in more detail. Since late 1997, Indonesia has been in a state of social and political turmoil, which makes the country of interest to many people, including academics in fields such as history, politics and sociology, journalists and those with an interest in international affairs. The national language, intimately linked with the nation and in many ways a reflection of it, shares in this interest. A study of the Indonesian language is particularly relevant to Australians. Indonesia is Australia’s closest large neighbour and is con- sistently identified as one of Australia’s most important foreign rela- tionships. A knowledge of the country and its language is often emphasised to Australians and Indonesian is one of the major languages taught in Australia, at both secondary and tertiary levels. Despite recent serious economic and political problems, relations with Indonesia clearly remain of major significance to Australia, for political, economic, strategic and social reasons. However, interest in Indonesia is by no means confined to Australia. Because of its position as the fourth largest nation in the world and the 2• THE INDONESIAN LANGUAGE largest Moslem state, it is the focus of considerable international atten- tion. Indonesia’s population is more than 200 million, and the number speaking the national language is approaching 100 per cent. Indonesian is thus among the languages with the highest numbers of speakers in the world; a study of the language is highly relevant for this reason alone. While the book aims to be informative to teachers and advanced students of the language and students of linguistics, nevertheless the structure of the language is only very briefly touched on. Comments on grammar and phonology are few and discussion of phonetics is kept to a minimum. There is thus no assumption of expert knowledge of linguistics or Indonesian on the part of the reader. Although the book traces the history of the language, linguistic description of historical changes is only given in a very limited way. Any historical linguistic study would, of necessity, be technical and thus uninformative to anyone without training in historical-comparative linguistics. Traditional English place-names are used, rather than local names; for instance, Malacca instead of Malaka or Melaka, and Moluccas instead of Maluku. For Indonesian names, the present-day Indonesian spelling is used; thus Pujangga Baru instead of the older spelling Poedjangga Baroe. The names of the first two presidents, which are inconsistently spelt today with ‘u’ or ‘oe’, are rendered Sukarno and Suharto. All instances of Indonesian words and phrases are presented in italics. I am grateful to many people for helpful assistance, advice and information. These include Soenjono Dardjowidjojo, Bambang Kaswanti Purwo, Dendy Sugono, Yuli Kartika Sari, Tessa Yuditha, George Quinn, Sander Adelaar, John Jorgensen, Keith Foulcher, Bob Elson, Ed Aspinall, Hein Steinhauer, Margaret Bocquet-Siek, Raimy Che-Ross, Doris Nicholson and Leila Chudori. During my many visits to Indonesia, I have received generous help from many people, some of whom are listed above. I particularly wish to express my sincere gratitude to the Suparto and Widagdo families in Jakarta for their hospitality and friendship over many years. My wife Susan has been most encouraging and understanding and has provided the supportive environment necessary for extended periods of reclusive work, as well as giving sensible advice on drafts of some sections of the book. To her I offer my loving thanks. Finally, I express my appreciation to Anton Moeliono, who gave me the opportunity to work for two extended periods at the National Centre for Language Cultivation and Development (the Pusat Bahasa) PREFACE •3 in Jakarta. This enabled me to gain some insight into its activities. Professor Moeliono has devoted his professional life to the Indonesian language, to its development, refinement and acceptance, enduring many battles for his cause along the way. Any errors in the text are mine alone and I apologise to anyone who supplied information that I misinterpreted or misused in any way. 4• THE INDONESIAN LANGUAGE 1 INTRODUCTION A NEW LANGUAGE FOR A NEW NATION On 28 October 1928, delegates at the Second Indonesian Youth Congress passed a resolution, known as the Youth Pledge, proclaiming Indonesian to be the language of national unity. The language to which they were referring was Malay, or rather the variety of it that would become the national language of the future Indonesian state. Malay was far from being universally understood in Indonesia, with only about 5 per cent of the population at that time being native speakers. It was, however, the principal lingua franca among the speakers of the hun- dreds of languages in the Indonesian archipelago

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