English Spoken Here

The Jakarta Post   |  Tue, 04/29/2008 3:33 PM  |  Trends

In Indonesia, globalization has been marked by rapid growth in technology, including cyber trends, e-banking and 3G mobile phones. On the language front, some fear Indonesian is losing out to English as the lingua franca of the younger generation. Maggie Tiojakin reports.

New parents Damar and Erni hail from Purwokerto, Central Java, two native-born and bred Indonesians.
But the language they use to communicate is a foreign one.

At their home in Sunter, the couple spends quality time with their daughter, Lila, born last June, teaching her how to say “Mommy” and “Daddy”, instead of the traditional “Mama” and “Papa” or “Ibu” and “Ayah”.
Damar met Erni seven years ago at a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. He was studying for his degree at the University of California at San Francisco, and she was visiting her sister during semester break.

They say their best conversations are mostly conducted in English.

“It’s not a trendy thing for us,” says Damar, 34, who is today a freelance brand designer.

“We met in the U.S., so it was natural that we spoke English. Then, we got comfortable with the language.”
Erni, who works in marketing, agrees. In the beginning, she says, she spoke English with Damar as a way of improving her proficiency. Now, however, it has become a habit that’s hard to shake.

“Of course, we also speak Bahasa,” she says. “It’s not like we don’t know how or refuse to use our national language. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier to express yourself in English.”

Erni, who has a degree in communications from the London School in Jakarta, wants Lila to grow up as a bilingual speaker.

“I didn’t learn English until I was way into my teenage years and in that period, you’ve got a lot more going on in your life than learning how to speak English,” she says.

”I think it’s easier if you start early, because children adapt quicker to new languages and new surroundings.”

Like most young mothers born in the times of cordless phones and satellite TV, she believes that the ability to speak English will provide her child with the necessary tools to survive in the world.

“It’s much more important for Lila’s generation to learn English,” she says. “By the time she’s my age, globalization will be 10 times more advanced than it is today, and if she’s not equipped to face the challenges … what’s going to become of her?”

Statistically, English is the lingua franca of the modern era. Two-thirds of the world’s population speak English, as either a first or second language.

“If you look at the superficial values, it’s a good thing that English is used all around,” Pram Sudaryo, a Fulbright scholar at Columbia University majoring in anthropology and Southeast Asian studies, says by e-mail. “The problem is, language comes with its own set of attitudes. When you speak English regularly, you’re bound to think like a Westerner. And the more we force ourselves to adapt to a foreign culture, the less we care about ours.”

This may explain controversial regulations back in the 1980s and 1990s, when the government discouraged the use of foreign phrases in all commercial aspects. At the time, businesses around the country were required to change foreign-sounding names into Indonesian-sounding ones (at least, by way of spelling and pronounciation) which resulted in a confounding jumble of words.

Green Garden residential complex became Gren Gaden; Indomart convenience store became Indomaret; Queen Hotel became Hotel Quirin; and various other examples.

A mad solution for a questionable problem created by the government simply as another way to keep its people in line? Perhaps. Ultimately, it proved futile to try to “protect” a language derived from the trading parlance of central and southern Sumatra that was chosen to unite the diverse ethnic groups of the emerging nation, but was influenced by those groups as well as the waves of migrants to the Indonesian archipelago.  

The end of the New Order regime in the late 1990s marked the resurgence of a new “cultural invasion” in Indonesia as globalization swept in. English words and phrases came into common usage, sometimes because there were no Indonesian equivalents and sometimes as a means to “show off”. Local books, films and songs emerged with English titles; restaurants, cafés and other entertainment venues also used foreign names.

“[Globalization] is an abstract concept,” writes Pram. “Three hundred years ago it took the form of Western colonization. Two thousand years ago it was the Roman Empire. Today, the process is less aggressive and the interest is mutual … so, change is inevitable.”

As inevitable, perhaps, as our growing love for all things Western. Thanks to American pop culture, many young people prefer to express their thoughts and feelings in English.

Nani, a tenth grader at a bilingual school, is crazy about the English language. Speaking in English helps her think critically, she says. Whereas Indonesian, she adds, “is only good for stupid jokes.”

Stupid how?

“Well, I don’t mean that speaking Bahasa is stupid—obviously, it’s my language too,” she says during lunch in the school cafeteria. “Its, like, when I talk in Bahasa with my friends … I feel bored. The jokes are meaningless, while English jokes are sarcastic, smart.”

Does she want to stop using Indonesian altogether some day?

She shrugs. “If I live abroad, then maybe. But even then I can’t just remove it from my head, can I?”

Language purists are also alarmed by the widespread use of slang and poor grammar in common Indonesian, especially in advertisements and the media. The teenage actress Cinta Laura, the offspring of a transnational marriage, has upped her public profile through her malapropisms and comical butchering of the language.    

But high school senior Deni dismisses the fear his generation is making English their lingua franca.
“I don’t know anybody who speaks English unless they really have to,” he says. “My friends would laugh at me if I started talking to them in English, because it doesn’t make me cool and smart — it makes me arrogant and foolish.”

Ayu, a 16-year-old high school student, thinks English is an important language to study. She even has a habit of speaking to her friends in a mix of English and Indonesian, often dubbed Indo-English. Nevertheless, she does not share Nani’s wish to make English her main form of communication.
 “I mean, yeah, it’s kind of nice to be able to speak English and everything. But not to the point where I abandon my own language.”

Four months before Lila’s first birthday, Damar and Erni are already arguing about where they want their daughter to receive her education. Erni wants a private school in the area; Damar suggests an international school in South Jakarta.

Surprisingly, despite their own love of English, old language habits die hard.

“Whatever language Lila chooses to speak later in life, Indonesian will always be her mother tongue,” says Erni.

So maybe, despite all the concerns, Indonesian is a hardier language than we thought.  

“Don’t worry,” Pram says, “it takes more than globalization to reduce the existence of an entire linguistic denomination into a historical footnote.”

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