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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

#151

Post by lioeters »

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 find this fascinating too. From where I live, I've noticed and started learning more about Sanskrit's influence on European and Slavic languages. Maybe if I studied Sanskrit, it could help me learn more languages quicker, with a somewhat common vocabulary of root words.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#152

Post by vram22 »

forapurpose wrote: post #86
vram22 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 th…

Check this out, as one example, in the History section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia

>The influence could have gone the other way

Can be, sure. My saying that there was influence in one direction did not rule out it happening the other way as well Good point.

>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.

Sure. I did not claim that. In fact, I've read a bit about the common features of Indian and European languages, etc. - and you can detect it too, if you listen to, or read, stuff in both Indian and European languages - e.g. mater (Latin) ~ mata (Sanskrit), pater (Latin) ~ pita (Sanskrit), hundreds more words that seem to sound similar or have a common root which historians say is due to the common Proto-Indo-European roots of both, which is the topic of a descendant (but really ancestor :) link of the one you posted: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indo-European-languages

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Europeans

Not sure how true all of that is, though. I have a healthy skepticism about historians, particularly when they cross-quote each other, and make claims about the past that almost sound like they were present there at the time :) And another reason is how the heck can they know all that they claim to, about things so long ago.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#153

Post by vram22 »

lioeters wrote: post #151
vram22 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 find this fascinating too. From where I live, I've noticed and started learning more about Sanskrit's influence on European and Slavic languages. Maybe if I studied Sanskrit, it could help me learn more languages quicker, with a somewhat common vocabulary of root words.

Cool. You should go for it. Having studied Sanskrit earlier for some years, I can say that it is a fun and interesting language to learn, and also not very difficult, since the grammar is very regular and systematic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit#Grammar

(That's a scholarly article, don't go by it, though you could skim it, just giving it for background info. Try out the language instead.)

There are a handful of rules, and the rest of the stuff builds upon that, the way programs build upon the handful of syntax and semantic rules about statements in programming language.

An interesting point mentioned in the article is that "Word order is free" in Sanskrit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order

While not a linguist myself, I've noticed that the meanings of sentences in Sanskrit seem to be intelligible and mean the same, even if you switch some of the words around. I don't know if that is true for any other languages.

I wonder if that point has any connection with the concept of context-free grammars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-free_grammar

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#154

Post by astrodust »

hikarudo wrote: post #63
astrodust wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans used to ridicule people living in the Soviet Union because they had to buy the same sofa, the same car, the same beer, all manufactured by the state. They lived in the same apartments, stamped out by decree, from Europe to the Pacific. Now having Lay's everywhere is a thing to be celebrated? Lay's are terrible. It's like what happens to a potato when you take all the fun out of them and make them into somet…

I think they meant that you can find Lay's everywhere, not that you can only find Lay's everywhere. There's a huge difference between those two things. I'd take that any day over Soviet Union.

It's this kind of bland ubiquity that is what the Soviet Union was all about.

I'm not saying the Soviet experience was great, but that the modern American experience of the same shit, the same stores, the same everything everywhere you go is bordering on absurd.

America is a handful of mergers away from having one cable company, one telephone company, one media company, one film production company.

That's not a good look.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#155

Post by DennisP »

hikarudo wrote: post #70
DennisP wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple years ago I read a book about learning languages, by a guy who'd learned 30 languages to some degree and was fluent in seven. In his opinion, Indonesian was the easiest to learn by far. He gave various reasons, but what sticks in my mind is that to make any noun plural, you just say it twice. (But I've also read that simple languages tend to develop a lot of extra nuances that native speakers use to add expr…

I think that book is titled "How to learn any language", by Barry Farber.

That does ring a bell.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#156

Post by astrodust »

luord wrote: post #109
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. As someone hailing from an apparently more "heterogeneous" country than the USA, I gotta ask: Death of what?

Death of culture. Death of variety. Death of everything that made America an interesting place to visit.

Every city used to have its own local shops, brands, traditions, cultural events. Cleveland and Rochester were worlds apart despite being geographically close.

Now it's the same stores, the same malls, the same cookie-cutter McMansions. The only variety left is the color of the police cars and minor variations in the speed limit.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#157

Post by astrodust »

jsonne wrote: post #112
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 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 of…

There are pockets where there's cultural differences, but you really need to dig to hit the bedrock. Superficially there's almost no difference. The things that once made places like San Francisco unique and interesting are being destroyed by gentrification, and Utah itself is being gentrified just the same.

I'm not arguing against cosmopolitanism, but that's not what you think it is. That's where wildly different cultures can co-exist, side by side, and you can move seamlessly from one to another. Manhattan used to be a good example of this, but now it's getting extremely bland, with all the character being paved over by crushingly dull uniformity.

A lot of Americans think accepting diversity means allowing non-white people to act as if they were white, and this is where all this gentrification comes from. Yes, our condo is progressive because we don't discriminate. Anyone who can afford the cripplingly high costs are welcome to live there!

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#158

Post by astrodust »

reaperducer wrote: post #81
derekp7 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is that when Wal-Mart shows up all the local businesses die but for the ones that sell stuff that Wal-Mart doesn't. That's usually just porn and adult toys with the occasional guns and/or liquor store.

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#159

Post by forapurpose »

vram22 wrote: post #152
forapurpose wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Check this out, as one example, in the History section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia >The influence could have gone the other way Can be, sure. My saying that there was influence in one direction did not rule out it happening the other way as well Good point. >often influences are very indirect, such as Sanskrit's influence on European languages - it wasn't due to lots of Sanskrit speakers vacationing in F…

> Not sure how true all of that is, though. I have a healthy skepticism about historians

Is that supposed to be an argument against it? Have you examined the arguments and evidence, which thousands of experts have examined and been convinced by? What exactly do you object to?

Re: Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia

#160

Post by vram22 »

forapurpose wrote: post #159
vram22 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check this out, as one example, in the History section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia >The influence could have gone the other way Can be, sure. My saying that there was influence in one direction did not rule out it happening the other way as well Good point. >often influences are very indirect, such as Sanskrit's influence on European languages - it wasn't due to lots of Sanskrit speakers vacationing in F…

> Not sure how true all of that is, though. I have a healthy skepticism about historians Is that supposed to be an argument against it? Have you examined the arguments and evidence, which thousands of experts have examined and been convinced by? What exactly do you object to?

> Have you examined the arguments and evidence, which thousands of experts have examined and been convinced by?

Which "thousands of experts", are you referring to, exactly?

Sure, there could be many thousands of "expert" historians. My point is, have you personally "examined the arguments and evidence" of those thousands of experts, who you claim have been convinced by said evidence? If not, why are you arguing on their behalf?

>What exactly do you object to?

I'm objecting to the fact that some of them (whose claims I have read in history or Sanskrit courses I studied in school), state things about people and events of centuries ago, as though they know for sure that those things happened in the way they claim - without providing evidence, except for their assertions, which anyone can make.

That's why I have a healthy skepticism about them.

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