My article on today's edition of Jakarta Post, in relation to Hari Sumpah Pemuda (the Youth Pledge)
Link to original article is here


Is our language an endangered species?
Santi Dharmaputra , Munich, Germany | Tue, 10/28/2008 10:24 AM | Opinion

I speak to my children in the Indonesian language, while my husband, a French, speaks with them only in French. Our family has been living in three different countries, socializing with Indonesian and French communities alike.

Encountering these two groups in Indonesia, France and other countries of residence, I have noticed different reactions between the French and the Indonesians when hearing us and our children converse in our native languages.

The French, whether they are relatives or friends, treat our children's ability to speak French as natural. They consider it very normal for French children to speak French, even though they have an Indonesian mom and have never lived in France.

In contrast, whenever we mingle with the Indonesian community, abroad or in Indonesia, they are surprised to hear my children and I interact in Indonesian. Listening to my eldest son speak the language causes them to react as if he was speaking an unnatural tongue. It turns out that, for different reasons, many Indonesian parents I meet overseas raise their children in foreign languages.

One group claims it is difficult for themselves to speak it within a foreign environment. Yet another group will say they lost the ability to speak it because they have stayed abroad so long. The latter consists of those who deem it very normal to raise their children in the language environment they live in. For these reasons, the result is the same. The children do not speak their language.

It is puzzling to see many Indonesians abroad and/or married to foreigners consider it tough to raise children in their own tongue, as our country is actually multilingual. Plenty of us are brought up in at least one vernacular language at home along with the Indonesian language at school with good proficiency in each.

However, once living outside the country, many Indonesians seem to become oblivious to this phenomenon. Raising children in more than one language becomes a big issue, and therefore they reject the mother tongue for other languages. It is also strange to hear them use their declining fluency in their mother tongue as a reason to not speak it to their children.

A great number of Indonesians I meet began to live abroad during their university years or after their marriage. That means they have spent at least 18 years of their lives, if not more, in Indonesia. This means they should still be able to speak it with their own children.

It is conceivable, though, that it does take some effort to continue speaking Indonesian in another language environment. Yet if the French, the Chinese or the Turks manage to pass their native languages onto the next generation, why are we not able to do so?

All of this matters because language contains one's identity. Even if someone is brought up overseas or has a foreign father or mother, he/she is still Indonesian by blood. Research shows that immigrant college students, who possess sufficient knowledge of their parents' languages, feel more comfortable about their self-identity. They belong to two or more cultures, and to speak the language is one way to develop a sense of ownership of each.

Since the mother tongue is so important, why would many Indonesians choose to raise their children in foreign languages? In one of his essays, Ajip Rosidi notes that, "The inferior feeling for the Indonesian language and the assumption that being able to chatter in a foreign language will raise admiration among the listeners, are shown daily on TV ..., particularly by the anchors and journalists. It seems that if the speaker does not insert English sentences or words ..., the speaker is worried that (people) will assume he/she is not intelligent ...."

Although acquiring a foreign language is a necessity, our language should not become an orphan in its own country. If our people think of their language as described by Ajip Rosidi, once they live abroad or have a foreign spouse they will always have a good reason to raise their children in other languages. Moreover, my fellow citizens often see their own language as "simple" and "unimportant on the language map", which are illusions.

The global position of a language connects to the nation's politics and socio-economics. Being spoken by fewer people than, for instance, Mandarin, does not make our language insignificant. It is, after all, the language that unifies our country. For some of us it is also the language of love since our parents used it when raising us.

Furthermore, having different grammar from English or Japanese does not categorize our language as simple. In reality it is complicated, as one should acquire both the colloquial and the high varieties to function in every situation.

I believe that our people's reluctance to bring up their offspring in Indonesian is because of our chronic feeling of inferiority, intermingled with a misconception of our own language. Our appreciation for our language within the country is already low, and once living abroad or married to foreigners, we then have every reason to stop passing this mother tongue onto our children. The question is, with this attitude and mentality, how long will our people continue to use the Indonesian language?

The writer raises two quadralingual children and currently resides in Germany. Her research is on multilingualism, multiculturalism and cross-culture-kids. She blogs at http://trilingual.livejournal.com.