Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 163 posts

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#111

Post by bobthepanda »

pixl97 wrote: post #105
quacked wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>because they're all slowly becoming the same, when they used to be so different. Welcome to the modern world. This will eventually happen everywhere. It's easy for places to be different when they were separated by days or weeks of travel time. Now ideas can be transferred in seconds and the entire US can be traversed in days. Regional factories used to supply the area around them. Now one part made in China can be…

Conversely, technology also allows similar people to refine their ideas about what makes them similar. Cultures will maintain their separate ideas and market strategies as long as there are enough people to pay for them. After all, Walmart is struggling in other markets as varied as China and Canada, because their model doesn't adapt very well outside the US. Likewise, visiting a KFC in China is actually very different from visiting a KFC in the US.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#112

Post by jsonne »

astrodust wrote: post #58
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…

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…

I want to challenge you on a few fronts.

1. Different parts of the US have vastly different values and cultural differences. Unless of course you want to compare SF, to rural Utah filled with devout Mormons, to the south side of Chicago, to Miami and say they're all the same.

2. The argument you're making is essentially against cosmopolitanism. I don't per say disagree, but it should be known that while you listed off the "fun" parts of a huge diversity of culture in one country you also run into the less fun when it comes to shared values on things like equality of the sexes, permissiveness of different sexual orientations and religions etc. Those very much so are also a huge part of cultural diversity.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#113

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

mshaler wrote: post #37

Old (not fake) news: the difference between a dialect and a language is an army and a navy.

I've never liked that witticism. For one thing it breaks down really quickly - ie by that logic Welsh is a dialect of English, and Walloon French is a dialect of Flemish. It's also fairly irrelevant to me what a government thinks is a dialect when I want to discuss languages. IE ethnic chinese can call languages that are mutually unintelligable 'dialects' all they want, it doesn't change reality.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#114

Post by erik_seaberg »

wtmt wrote: post #40
pandler wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I visited a Hyderabad office that used English with each other, not just with me, because half were locals who knew Telugu and half were recent arrivals who knew Hindi.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#115

Post by fernandopj »

reaperducer wrote: post #79
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…

This isn't progress, this is death by gentrification I don't know if gentrification is the right word. Maybe death by standardization. The big breakthrough that made McDonald's a successful company was coming up with processes and supply chains that allowed its food to be predictable. Before McDonald's, when you drove across the country and stopped at a burger joint, you never knew what the food would be like. Today,…

> With the exception of Russia and Georgia, it's said that no two nations that have McDonald's have ever gone to war.

Well, I went to do a research on that. It's called "The Golden Arches Theory"[1], it was meant to be tone-in-cheek, but to rationalize on the idea that two countries who develop a middle-class and economic stability to make a McDonald's viable no longer have an interest on going into war to each other.

Of course, there are many exceptions, both before, immediately and long after that "theory" was written:

- The 1989 United States invasion of Panama

- In 1999, India and Pakistan fought a war over Kashmir, known as the Kargil War. Both countries had (and continue to have) McDonald's restaurants.

- The 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, following hostilities ongoing since 1973, with South Lebanon occupied until May 2000. (McDonald's franchises were established in Israel and Lebanon in 1993 and 1998, respectively.) However, the Lebanese Armed Forces were not a party to the fighting, the Israel Defense Forces action being taken instead against the paramilitary group Hezbollah.

- The 2008 South Ossetia war between Russia and Georgia.

- The 2014 Crimean crisis between Russia and Ukraine.

And even more amazing, there's an improved version of the theory:[2]

"The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain."

That is that, as long as corporations have major supply chain operations in countries other than that corporation's home country, those countries will never engage in armed conflicts. This is because of the economic interdependence between nations that arises when a large corporation (such as Dell) has supply chain operations in multiple global locations and when developing nations (in which supply chain operations commonly take place) are reluctant to give up their newfound wealth.

But I doubt that updated version wouldn't fall short to prevent the exceptions listed above.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree#G...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat#Dell_theory_...

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#116

Post by inferiorhuman »

vintagedave wrote: post #110
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…

> I want to visit an America where I can't understand what they're saying even though it's allegedly English, where you need to work at it, absorb the local dialect. Where they have strange terms for things that you need to learn to fit in. Try visiting an English-speaking country that's not America. I suggest that because the inverse was true for me: In 2010, I (Australian) ended up in a hotel somewhere between Mobi…

> The waitress could not understand my accent, and I could not understand hers. I ended up ordering by pointing at the menu. Then I ate waffles with bacon and maple syrup (what a crazy mixture. I've had it since, but that was the first time) while listening to Southern accents around me, only 3/4 of which I could decipher. Let me tell you, hearing Southern accents in movies or TV did not prepare me for a random, back-of-nowhere truck stop outside a small town in Mississippi.

As an American in Australia I found that I could communicate easily enough, but it was often a struggle with cashiers. Katoomba was the smallest town I visited, and that didn't pose much of a challenge (except for the food). Contrast that experience with London's east end where there were a number of accents I simply couldn't understand. The thing I've found with Australia, Canada, and the UK is that in major cities the dialect is similar enough that if you're somewhat familiar with British vocabulary you'll be fine. Contrast that to someplace like Indonesia / Malaysia / Singapore where the accent isn't impenetrable but the slang is mostly Malay derived and it's a whole other world.

Bringing it back to Waffle House though, the only WHs I've visited were in areas where the southern accent wasn't particularly strong. We have local and big chain diners out here on the west coast (e.g. Denny's, IHOP), so a diner isn't a new experience. But visiting Waffle House was a bit of a culture shock to me. While I could understand the words, every single person was discussing football. Except for some expat restaurants, you really wouldn't find that style of situation.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#117

Post by selimthegrim »

rayiner wrote: post #94
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…

> I want to visit an America where I can't understand what they're saying even though it's allegedly English, where you need to work at it, absorb the local dialect. It may be more interesting to visit such an America, but it would be a lot harder to democratically govern such an America.

Hell, we can barely democratically govern Louisiana. Not for nothing did A.J. Liebling dub it Lebanon.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#118

Post by freeflight »

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…

> 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.

Weird how I never really noticed that. The US does have its fair share of local dialects, but they are usually still very easy to understand, even for non-native English speakers. It's one of the reasons why I prefer US English to British English, with some British dialects I have a really hard time understanding what's being said.

Do Brits struggle with understanding some British dialects? As a native German speaker, I know for a fact that some German dialects just sound like incomprehensible gibberish to me.

Which is extra funny when you run into these kinds of dialects near big US military installations, like Grafenwöhr, where the locals speak with an extremely thick upper palatinate dialect.

Must be really confusing for any of the US servicemembers stationed there who are trying to learn German, trying to understand German that not even most Germans would be able to understand.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#119

Post by grawprog »

I've got a friend from Indonesia who explained a little bit to me about it. She said bahasa is spoken more by younger people and is considered slang by the older people. In her town the older people speak their local dialect, my friend learned Javanese while in university. Her friends and her speak bahasa together, she speaks her local dialect with her family and older people in her town and Javanese with her friends that speak that. Bahasa seems like a fairly simple language. She's been teaching me phrases and some grammar and such and compared to other Asian languages i've seen and heard it's pretty straightforward.
Post reply on HN