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Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

bbc.com

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Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#21

Post by perlancar3 »

curtis wrote: post #20

The article's premise is that it seems like nobody in Indonesia speaks Bahasa Indonesia well, because it's always a second language. I can't find a good reference right now, but I think that's wrong. I'm under the impression that in Jakarta and the surrounding areas (probably tens of millions of people) Bahasa Indonesia really is spoken as a first language. I think this area has historically been Malay-speaking anywa…

I'm Indonesian. Lots of people have Bahasa Indonesia as their first language, especially in the cities. Unless you go to the remote areas, you practically won't find people who can't speak Indonesian.

In fact, it's the use of regional languages like Sundanese which is diminishing. I could really feel the skill and the vocabulary range of even the native Sundanese are worse than 10-20 years ago. Lots of mixing with Indonesian vocabulary without knowing the Sundanese words.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#22

Post by zafiro17 »

curtis wrote: post #20

The article's premise is that it seems like nobody in Indonesia speaks Bahasa Indonesia well, because it's always a second language. I can't find a good reference right now, but I think that's wrong. I'm under the impression that in Jakarta and the surrounding areas (probably tens of millions of people) Bahasa Indonesia really is spoken as a first language. I think this area has historically been Malay-speaking anywa…

In Jakarta the people speak Bahasa and Javanese equally. People who have come in from other areas of the country speak their own language plus Bahasa; the Javanese who were born there make Javanese the most common language.

Malay and Bahasa are 90% the same language. Bahasa is considered a traders' language, much like Swahili - a lingua franca that allowed commerce to happen for centuries.

Source: studied bahasa for two years and used to live on Java - amazing, complex place.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#24

Post by perlancar3 »

curtis wrote: post #14

Some things I learned when I was in Singapore and Indonesia about 10 years ago: - Our Singaporean host had business dealings in Indonesia and he said he could get by just relying on his Malay language skills, so it seems that Malay and Bahasa Indonesia have a decent degree of mutual intelligibility. - In one of the national museums we ran into an American professor who had been teaching part time in Indonesia for man…

Malay and Indonesian language are like British and American English, except with far more difference in vocabulary and far more false cognates. Although not nearly as different as, say, Portuguese and Spanish.

Yes, a typical Malaysian or Singaporean (especially if he has native or near native Malay language skill) will be able to order food at restaurants, buy stuffs, ask for directions, and even converse with an Indonesian speaker, albeit with awkwardness every so often. But for serious or technical discussion, the conversers might as well switch to English for better communication, even if they both only have moderate level of English.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#25

Post by sidibe »

arghwhat wrote: post #18
shp0ngle wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Mandarin Chinese understood on all China, from Xinjiang to Canton?

Think of Mandarin like English. Many regions only have it as second language, with not everyone speaking it well (and just like with English, younger generations do better on average). In regions where it is the first language, it is usually a dialect differing from Standard Mandarin. Canton (guangzhou) speaks Cantonese, Shanghai speaks Shanghainese, and so it goes, with none of these languages having much at all to…

That's exaggerated, outside of Cantonese-speaking areas Mandarin is the native language of the younger generations.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#26

Post by temp-dude-87844 »

rayiner wrote: post #5

People in America really don't appreciate the blessing of having a single (nearly) uniformly spoken language. Being able to drop in anywhere in a country of 300+ million people and being able to converse with the locals (not just communicate , but convey your deepest thoughts)--it's a benefit the vast majority of people in the world simply do not have. This article touches on something I've been thinking a lot about…

There's also a lot to be said for shared institutions like government, religion, retail and media. You can drive to the other coast, and during your four or five-day journey, you will decent roads and useful signage; truck stops from same 5 chains (in truth, only 3 different companies) with reliable bathrooms, fuel, and drinks; restaurants from the same dozen chains serving familiar food; Walmarts where you can be in Richfield, Utah or Ermine, Kentucky and you find the same Lay's chips, the same Progresso or Campbell's soup, the same Colgate and Oral-B toothbrush, the same flatscreen TVs, the same video games. You pay with the same cash or card, you have the same return policy. When talking to people, you can talk about the same high-profile domestic sports teams, invoke recent pop culture events, or federal politics, and they'll have something to say.

There's swaths of the US that are far off the beaten path, but an overwhelming portion of the population is hooked into the same fabric of distribution of information and products. This is made easier, and is also perceived more readily, by a shared home language being the language of interchange.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#27

Post by pandler »

imjustsaying wrote: post #17
shp0ngle wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Mandarin Chinese understood on all China, from Xinjiang to Canton?

Glad you asked, as this article reminded me of that. Outside of Northern China, where Mandarin is original dialect, the answer is no, Mandarin is not understood throughout the country on a level that English is in the US. It's a kind of second language for many, with younger generations generally being more fluent than their elders. Like the Indonesian dialect, it's somewhat forced by recent government mandate except…

I experienced the same in India a few month ago, when I traveled the length of the west coast with an Indian friend of mine. Coming from the US, I never appreciated how diverse the country is, especially with language. In the south especially, he often struggled just as much as me to communicate with people from his own country, despite being fluent in both Hindi and English.

It blew my mind a little bit, especially realizing the administrative nightmare it must be to run a country of over 1.3 billion people with so many languages.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#28

Post by perlancar3 »

xxpor wrote: post #23

It's always seemed wild to me that Indonesia doesn't come up more in general in the west. It seems like the only time I hear about it in the news is when there's a natural disaster.

Don't worry, it's improving :) We used to only be recognized as "the country which has Bali" (or even sometimes falsely as "located in Bali").

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#29

Post by perlancar3 »

zafiro17 wrote: post #22
curtis wrote: post #20

The article's premise is that it seems like nobody in Indonesia speaks Bahasa Indonesia well, because it's always a second language. I can't find a good reference right now, but I think that's wrong. I'm under the impression that in Jakarta and the surrounding areas (probably tens of millions of people) Bahasa Indonesia really is spoken as a first language. I think this area has historically been Malay-speaking anywa…

In Jakarta the people speak Bahasa and Javanese equally. People who have come in from other areas of the country speak their own language plus Bahasa; the Javanese who were born there make Javanese the most common language. Malay and Bahasa are 90% the same language. Bahasa is considered a traders' language, much like Swahili - a lingua franca that allowed commerce to happen for centuries. Source: studied bahasa for…

I wouldn't quite say "equally". Jakarta is a melting pot and the most significant portion of the population there is of Javanese descent. But many many people who are of Javanese descent don't even speak Javanese, especially if they were born in Jakarta or in the western part of Java.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#30

Post by mtts »

curtis wrote: post #20

The article's premise is that it seems like nobody in Indonesia speaks Bahasa Indonesia well, because it's always a second language. I can't find a good reference right now, but I think that's wrong. I'm under the impression that in Jakarta and the surrounding areas (probably tens of millions of people) Bahasa Indonesia really is spoken as a first language. I think this area has historically been Malay-speaking anywa…

I think the author's perspective is skewed because he's living in Yogya, which is, and has been for a long time, the center of a large and prestigious culture. Yogyakartans don't need to speak Indonesian unless they're dealing with the government.

It's very different if your native language is only spoken by a small number of people and / or isn't very prestigious.

Then there is, like you said, the capital, Jakarta, where non-Indonesian languages are only spoken at home (or not at all).

And I know for a fact there are is at least one region - but there's probably more - where the local language has pretty much died out. Minahasans, from Northen Sulawesi, no longer speak Minahasan languages, they speak Indonesian.

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