I would love to receive a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Bahasa Indonesia and Indonesian culture. If I were to receive such a grant, I would first plan to live in Indonesia for as long as possible. Total immersion would aid my linguistic development and cultural knowledge. I would likely try to stay in Surakarta since I have been there before and know people there who have helped me with my past research. Surakarta would also be a good place to start my research, as many Indonesians living there speak Javanese. Javanese and Indonesian are distinct, but you can understand either if you can speak one or the other. I would use my grant to study Islam's influence on Indonesian culture and Arabic's influence on the Indonesian language. Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation by population, and Islam is a key part of Indonesian culture. Arabic has also influenced Bahasa Indonesia, with many Arabic loanwords and spellings. I would like to explore Islamic/Arab influence in the region, highlighting how language and culture are intertwined. Furthermore, I would like to research Arabic study programs in Indonesia. Many Indonesians can recite from the Qur'an, but only from memorization. Since Arabic has influenced Indonesian, I would like to look further into how native Indonesian speakers learn Arabic and if their previous linguistic exposure helps. Knowing how to investigate the history of a language would greatly help my research since language families are easier to trace thanks to the work of previous linguists. Additionally, all the language skills I've acquired throughout this semester (such as knowledge of syntax and morphology) will help my deeper study of the language.
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Awesome to see another UR student interested in Indonesia. I am a senior and spent a semester there on a Boren language scholarship as well as some other travels in the country-- would totally recommend Boren, CLS, or Fulbright to learn more about the language and culture!
As a pretty proficient Indonesian speaker it is interesting when watching speeches or clips in Arabic or Turkish and seeing some Arabic words that have entered the vocabularies of other Muslim countries-- roots like adil (justice), or words like maaf or even alkitab (the Bible). I was based and Jawa Timur and will say that Javanese and Indo are not mutually intelligible, but have some similar vocab and grammar--maybe like German and English.