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Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

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Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#81

Post by reaperducer »

derekp7 wrote: post #71
astrodust wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't progress, this is death by gentrification. It's utterly sad that the same chain stores, the same shops, the same products are sold coast to coast, that the menus of most restaurants have basically zero variation from Louisiana to Arizona to California to Maine, places that historically could not be more different. Now you can land in some random city in the US and apart from a few very small pockets that h…

There is still a lot of that out there (getting smaller though). For example if you aren't in the American South, don't expect to be able to order sweet tea in a restaurant -- instead, you will get iced tea and some packets of sugar (which isn't the same as putting sugar in when the tea is being made). Only recently have I seen sweet tea offered in some places. I grew up in the midwest, however my mom is from the dee…

The key is to ignore all of the giant signs and flashy advertising and look for the local brands. They're everywhere, even in Wal-Mart. Just look at the lower shelves.

Of course, this doesn't always work when you're in a place like Minneapolis, or Chicago, or Dallas, where the national brands are the local brands.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#82

Post by reaperducer »

vram22 wrote: post #61
temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

An interesting thing is that despite all that, there is still a huge amount of diversity in the US, along many dimensions, based on what I've read in Wikipedia, for example, about regional US cuisines. The US might be a melting pot, but many of the ingredients in the pot are not quite melted - to coin a phrase :) - and I hope they stay that way.

despite all that, there is still a huge amount of diversity in the US

This is true. The more you travel, the more you encounter this. Chili in Cincinnati is not even remotely the same at chili in Houston. (Key ingredients in Houston are meat, chili powder, and tomato paste. Key ingredients in Cincinnati are chocolate, allspice, cinnamon, spaghetti, and cheddar cheese.)

Breakfast meat in eastern Pennsylvania is scrapple. In New Jersey it's Taylor ham. In Kentucky it's sausage links. In Iowa, it's bacon.

Philadelphia area grocery stores (last time I checked) stock Campbell's Cream of Turtle Soup. That would be unheard of in the rest of the country.

There are a lot of people who sit on the internet and whine about how boring life is in America. Life in America is like most other countries — exactly as boring as you make it, or as exciting as you make it. And again, the more you travel, the more you see the diversity of the nation unfold.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#83

Post by reaperducer »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #80
vram22 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting thing is that despite all that, there is still a huge amount of diversity in the US, along many dimensions, based on what I've read in Wikipedia, for example, about regional US cuisines. The US might be a melting pot, but many of the ingredients in the pot are not quite melted - to coin a phrase :) - and I hope they stay that way.

I think many tend to exaggerate the level of regional differences in America. Sure, there are some significant differences, but it's nowhere close to the level of difference of going to another country (except Canada). For example, language wise, if someone was raised in the US, I probably can't tell at all where they're from, especially if they're younger and/or college educated. Regional accents are weak as hell in…

Regional accents are weak as hell in the states, on average.

Then you haven't talked to many real locals when you travel.

When I talk to my relatives in New York City (real native New Yorkers, not imported midwest poser hipsters), my wife from another part of the country can't understand a word we say.

Siri is tuned to some California nuanced accent that means she can't understand my wife at all. I don't know how it understand people from Boston. (Again, real local people from Boston, not the imported flatlanders.)

A friend of mine from a major east coast city went through years of training to get rid of his accent. He says it was the key to becoming a success in the radio industry.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#84

Post by TulliusCicero »

nojvek wrote: post #57
wtmt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at any Indian currency bill (Rupee), you'd see the denomination written in words in 22 languages, though in a smaller font. Those are the official languages of India. The official languages of the central government are Hindi and English. All government communications between the central government and state governments or between state governments commonly happen in English because India does not have on…

Can attest to this as someone who has Indian parents but not born in India. You can get further with English than you would with Hindi in some parts. It seems India’s education has done well for introducing English to the young kids. You still have huge language barriers. I am impressed by the diversity of the world. m Most software is still very US centric and that makes me sad at times. English became a standard be…

Every language has its ups and downs. English is broken and inconsistent, but compared to, say, German (which I'm learning now), at least the core grammar is less complicated, it's more flexible, and most importantly there are no noun genders goddamn I hate those so much.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#85

Post by TulliusCicero »

theli0nheart wrote: post #10
shp0ngle wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Mandarin is about as pervasive in China as English is in Europe. The USA is definitely more linguistically homogeneous.

Depends on the area. You'll find speakers of lots of foreign languages all over in NYC or coastal California.

What might be unusual in the US though is that it's a big country in both population and geographic size, and yet the amount of regional variation in the primary tongue is quite limited. I think the UK and Germany have considerably more variation, even though they're smaller countries.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#86

Post by forapurpose »

vram22 wrote: post #62
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…

>the Javanese in one village might not be mutually intelligible (in the practical sense, anyway) with the Javanese spoken in another village a few miles away. >The word "Bahasa" means "language", and in Indonesian languages always seemed to be prefixed with ""Bahasa", e.g. "bahasa Indonesia", "bahasa Inggris", "bahasa Jerman". It is probably derived from the Sanskrit word "bhaashaa" (writing it phonetically, if that…

I don't know much about Sanskrit's history, but the linguistic similarities don't infer its influence on SE Asian languages. The influence could have gone the other way, from SE Asia to India (really, to South Asia; modern India's borders are a 20th century innovation, and Sanskrit seems to originate in Punjab, straddling modern India and Pakistan[0]) - and probably the influence would have gone both ways. Also, a third party could have influenced both, leaving them with similar vocabulary, and often influences are very indirect, such as Sanskrit's influence on European languages - it wasn't due to lots of Sanskrit speakers vacationing in France.

[0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indo-Aryan-languages

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#87

Post by vpribish »

reaperducer wrote: post #83
TulliusCicero wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many tend to exaggerate the level of regional differences in America. Sure, there are some significant differences, but it's nowhere close to the level of difference of going to another country (except Canada). For example, language wise, if someone was raised in the US, I probably can't tell at all where they're from, especially if they're younger and/or college educated. Regional accents are weak as hell in…

Regional accents are weak as hell in the states, on average. Then you haven't talked to many real locals when you travel. When I talk to my relatives in New York City (real native New Yorkers, not imported midwest poser hipsters), my wife from another part of the country can't understand a word we say. Siri is tuned to some California nuanced accent that means she can't understand my wife at all. I don't know how it…

dude, your wife is exaggerating - excluding Gullah I don't think any range of American accents even approaches the mutual unintelligibility on that tiny island we seceded from. I've been from east to west in the US, downeast, new york, boston - these are no problem whatsoever for any Californian or Midwesterner.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#88

Post by dkersten »

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…

I see a lot of non-native English speakers speaking English to each other because it’s a common language they all know. It’s not the same as what you’re describing, but it gets people a lot of the way there (my observation is based largely on Europeans and South Americans but others too, basically anywhere where English is commonly learned)

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#89

Post by TulliusCicero »

onezeronine2 wrote: post #60
rurban wrote: post #43

The only really successful state-demanded language simplification was in Korea, with Hangul. Wonder how that happened, but Korean really is extremely simple and successful. New Greek is also successful, but this grew out naturally such as English out of modernized Nieder-German. These had nothing to do with dialect unification efforts, only natural modernizations. The neighboring Filipino and Tagalog (it's popular na…

Almost everyone speaks the standard Filipino anywhere in Philippines because it is taught as a basic subject alongside English. However, Filipino is not the majority's first language here but the grammatical structure is the same most of time so it is easy to learn. But today, Filipino as its own language is diminishing its own identity due to its flexibility to combine and replace using English words. As an example,…

I hear "sorry" somewhat frequently in Munich now from Germans, I think because there isn't a simple direct equivalent in German; "Entschuldigung" is more like "excuse me" and "es tut mir leid" sounds kind of...stiff or overdone. At least that's what it seems like to me.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#90

Post by quacked »

reaperducer wrote: post #82
vram22 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting thing is that despite all that, there is still a huge amount of diversity in the US, along many dimensions, based on what I've read in Wikipedia, for example, about regional US cuisines. The US might be a melting pot, but many of the ingredients in the pot are not quite melted - to coin a phrase :) - and I hope they stay that way.

despite all that, there is still a huge amount of diversity in the US This is true. The more you travel, the more you encounter this. Chili in Cincinnati is not even remotely the same at chili in Houston. (Key ingredients in Houston are meat, chili powder, and tomato paste. Key ingredients in Cincinnati are chocolate, allspice, cinnamon, spaghetti, and cheddar cheese.) Breakfast meat in eastern Pennsylvania is scrapp…

I dunno. This is a topic I'm pretty passionate about. I'm extremely well-traveled within the US and have a lot of good friends from different states, and the tiny regional differences that you're mentioning are frustratingly bland compared to, say, the cultural differences between northern and southern France. And even there, the relentless pace of branded technology and products is increasing, to the point where in historic Aix-en-Provence, in a famously beautiful town square, there's an entire metallic-and-glass Apple store.

It pains me to see the same restaurants, architecture, road signs, vehicles, etc- because they're all slowly becoming the same, when they used to be so different. Houston, where I live, is a desert of strip malls, and the only reason you can tell it's Texas is because it's hot and sunny. Take away the sky and I could be in the same parking lot in any state in the US.

Going to the "historic" neighborhoods of cities or the national/state parks and wilderness areas are really the only way to truly get a feel for the vastness and diversity of the US, and it didn't use to be that way.

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