Abstract
The Republic of Indonesia is an archipelago of great social and linguistic complexity that covers an area about one-fifth that of the United States. Indonesia has an area of about 735,268 square miles (1,919,440 sq. km.), spread over an area much greater than that of the United Kingdom1, consisting of five major islands (Sumatra, Java [the most populous] Bali, Kalimantan, Sulawesi) in a total of about 17,000 (of which about 6, 000 are inhabited), kept apart by some 36, 000 square miles of inland seas. Indonesia stretches 3,180 miles east-west, equivalent to the distance from Boston to Los Angeles or from Dublin to the Caspian Sea and 1,100 miles north-south. (See Appendix A, Figure 9.) It has 224,784,210 people, with the largest concentration on Java. Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism have all influenced Indonesian cultures. Although Indonesia has an official language, Bahasa Indonesia, which serves as a common means of communication, according to the National Language Institute in 1972 there were 418 languages, 15 of which have more than a million speakers. However, the linguistic situation in Irian Jaya, now called Propinsi Papua, is still largely undocumented with the National Language Institute (in 1972) estimating there were 128 languages, Lynch (1998) estimating there were 205, while in 1978 the Summer Institute for Linguistics listed 569 languages (Nababan 1991).
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Notes
The Continental United States (excluding Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Samoa) covers 3, 615, 211 square miles, (9, 629, 091 sq. km.) occurring in a ‘single chunk, ‘ not separated by inland seas; it has a population of some 275, 562, 673. The UK, another island nation, includes some 94, 200 square miles (244, 820 sq. km.) and a population of 59, 508, 382.
Nababan (1991: 116ff) indicates that there might have been 500, 000 speakers of Malay—mainly located in the coastal areas of East and Central Sumatra—at the time of the 1928 Youth Pledge. Based on the 1971 census, it was estimated that 40.78 per cent, or 40.2 million out of a population of 118.3 million could speak Indonesian. The percentage increased by 20 per cent to 61 percent of the population, or 72 million out of 146 million (also see Moeliono 1986: 101).
Sneddon (2001: 81) points out that “the linguistic situation in Indonesia is one of diglossia, in which the language of everyday social interaction is significantly different from the formal variety of the language.” Jakartan Indonesian is the prestige variety of informal Indonesian. The informal variety is widespread, and as the name suggests largely untaught, and not well described by linguists. This causes problems for FL learners of Indonesian who by and large learn the formal variety.
The British invaded Java in 1811, made some land tenure reforms, but worked mainly through the Dutch administration. Thomas Stamford Raffles—later of Singapore fame-the British Lieutenant Governor was fluent in Malay and was keen to establish permanent British rule, but the East India Company was not interested and under the Convention of London (1814) the colony was handed back to the Dutch in 1816 (Smith 1991).
Hoffman (1973:26 cited in Pijnappel 1985) summarises this as follows: “In the 1880s, this pro-Javanese period was construed as having seen the application of a simple logic: the Dutch ruled over a great people, and, to know them well, one had to know their language, which was not Malay but Javanese.”
Raden Adjeng Kartini, a 19th century Javanese noblewomen who excelled in fields where women were traditionally excluded, and who is the focus of Women’s day in Indonesia, spoke Javanese and Dutch—which she used with other indigenous non-Ja vánese speakers. At a Literary Congress in Gent in 1900 she argued that Dutch should be made the official language to aid “vigorous spreading of the Netherlands culture among the Javanese people.” (Letter of 21 June 02; Kartini 1912 cited in Hoffman 1973:33.)
Moeliono (1986:33ff) provides a summary of school types and their development during the colonial period. Table 9 summarises primary and secondary student numbers by school type for 1940. From this we can see that only a relatively small number of the 70 million Indonesians spoke Dutch.
The Dutch had reason for concern. Even with only limited educational opportunities, there was not enough employment for educated Indonesians. There developed a group of intellectuals, without any real function within the colonial system, who through their proficiency in Dutch had access to Marxist critiques of colonialism and European notions of the nation state. Dutch thus provided both the ideas and a communicative medium for the Indonesian nationalist elite (Lowenberg 1992: 62).
Although much of this consisted of propaganda and catch phrases directed at hatred of the white man, its wide and constant use helped to spread the language and a sense of nationalism throughout the archipelago. Some of the slogans included: ▪ Hancurkan, musuh kita, itulah Inggeris Amerika (Destroy our enemy, the British and Americans)— line from a popular song in Sumatra;▪ Inggeris dilinggis; Amerika distrika, Belanda deperkuda (the British are to be chopped off, the Americans flattened by hot irons, the Dutch be made beasts of burden); ▪ Nippon saudara kita tua (Nippon is our elder brother). (Anwar 1980: 45 – 46)
The principles for terminological development emerging during this period were: 1) to use Indonesian words where possible, 2) to use regional languages (e.g., Javanese, Sundanese), 3) to look for words from Asian languages, and 4) to use European origin words when there were no other alternatives. The third principle was ignored as international terms, mainly of European origin, were preferred. Alisjahbana (1976: 70 ff) notes that when borrowing was required it was a complex process as some would want to introduce a Sanskrit word or derivative (harking back to the powerful Hindu empires), others an Arabic word (related to Malay as a vehicle for the spread of Islam), while others favoured Greco-Roman words. As use was decided by majority vote in sections and subsections, many compromises were made and some were decided by chance.
Both of these were Roman scripts. Malay also used the Jawi (an Arabic) script, but this is rarely used in Indonesia.
Schiffman (1996) discusses the diglossic problems faced in India when traditional languages are purified, making them even less suitable for everyday speech and modern communicative needs. This decision to accept change over classical purity has been an important factor in the modernisation of Bahasa Indonesia.
See Education Law 1950, no. 4; 1954, no. 12. Different authors provide different accounts of the numbers of languages of instruction, but Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Batak, Balinese and Malassarese (and Minangkabau, Achnese and Sasak) are reported to be used (Moeliono 1986:100). Of course, as is the case in many parallel bilingual situations world wide, teachers also may use vernacular languages unofficially to explain material to students.
Political parties based on ethnic loyalty are not allowed to exist in Indonesia and Indonesians are required to uphold the unity of the nation above that of their ethnic group (suku). This leaves promoters of regional languages open to the criticism of political regionalism (Anwar 1980: 139). The alleged purpose of the sedition laws in Malaysia is similar (see Chapter 7). People in countries like Australia, which are highly critical of these restrictions of freedom, do not appear to understand the potential problems that ethnic politics create for these polities.
While it can be argued that having a decentralised curriculum would attune it more to local and regional needs, curriculum development requires high professional capabilities to make all regions benefit from good quality education. This has led to a centralised system, but with the realisation of the importance of local and regional needs (Soedijarto 1979).
The authors have argued elsewhere (Baldauf 1998, Kaplan and Baldauf 1997) that a standard language is an artificial variety that is not anyone’s language, i.e., there are no native speakers of that variety. Even in countries where there is relatively little dialectal variation (e.g., Australia), no one speaks the standardised language. Therefore, in a country like Indonesia that is in the process of standardisation, where dialects are common and where teachers naturally reflect that dialectal variation, a totally pragmatic program of language study would not achieve the language spread aims.
In the 1980s the Language Centre promoted the use of new terminology and words that were claimed to come from ‘genuine Indonesian linguistic sources’, to replace terms like efektif, efisien, etc.. But, as this terminology seemed to be based primarily on Javanese, it was interpreted by non-Javanese as part of the Javanisation movement and resisted. This highlights the political nature of even simple language planning decisions (Baldauf and Kaplan in press). In this case in particular it highlights the neutral nature of Bahasa Indonesia—that has been one of the keys to its acceptance throughout the Republic, and the concerns that exist about Javanese domination.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the University of Southern California (USC) had a contract with the national Bureau of Statistics in Indonesia to train dozens (about 20 per year over a 15-year period) of specialists in Population Studies (Sociology) at the post-graduate level; virtually all of the candidates had to spend a year studying English at the American Language Institute (ALI) before doing their course work, and about 10 per cent were sent back without degrees because they were unable to function in English. While the situation has undoubtedly improved, the authors observe that many Indonesian research candidates still need a significant amount of language support.
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Kaplan, R.B., Baldauf, R.B. (2003). Language Planning in Indonesia. In: Language and Language-in-Education Planning in the Pacific Basin. Language Policy, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0145-7_6
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