SDLC 105: Discussion Post #6

[Casey Murano]

These readings helped me to contextualize the history of Indonesia and the role of language in this development. I knew that Bahasa Indonesian was only recently established as a nationally unifying language, but I did not know how this particular language became the official one and how other cultures helped shape this history. I also did not realize how many people speak Bahasa Indonesian: this language is actually often ranked as the sixth most commonly spoken language in the world. Beyond Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesian is spoken in Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia, among other places. These readings helped me to contextualize the history of Indonesia and the role of language in this development. I knew that Bahasa Indonesian was only recently established as a nationally unifying language, but I did not know how this particular language became the official one and how other cultures helped shape this history. I also did not realize how many people speak Bahasa Indonesian: this language is actually often ranked as the sixth most commonly spoken language in the world. Beyond Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesian is spoken in Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia, among other places. Indonesia is part of the Austronesian language family, which includes the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and some parts of Australia. The language has overlap with languages spoken in the Philippines, Hawaii, and Madagascar, among other places. I enjoyed looking at a chart that compared numbers 1-10 in different Austronesian languages - there is a lot of similarities in the languages. Indonesian comes directly from Malay, which began in Sumatra as an official court language and continued to serve as a common language for business exchanges. Today, Bahasa Indonesian is the Lingua Franca, or official language students study in schools and use for formal business encounters and navigation of daily life. It became the official language in 1928 through the Young People’s vow. This unifying means of communication strengthened the Indonesian collective identity and led to independence. At home, though, most Indonesians speak a local dialect. There are more than 700 local languages across the archipelago of Indonesia Bahasa Indonesian is still not the first language for many people - Javanese, Balinese, and Sudanese among others continue to be more widely practiced. 
Indonesia was colonized by the dutch, but unlike many other colonized countries, Bahasa Indonesian did not absorb much influence from the Dutch language. Religious groups did participate in the development of the language: Malay, or now Bahasa Indonesian, was the language used by missionaries, and Muslims helped switch the script used for the language from Jawi to Arabic. My Indonesian instructor has told us that many Indonesian names have Arabic influences because a large percentage of the population practices Islam.  Given that Indonesian is a lingua franca, it is designed to be pretty easy to learn - simplified grammatical constructions. Throughout the archipelago, there are many dialects and variations. For example, the way people use verbs that begin with ber- varies. Knowing the history of Bahasa Indonesia clarifies that if I am in a rural placement as an ETA, the primary language of my host community is not Bahasa Indonesia. To participate fully in their culture, the part below the iceberg, I will want to learn the local language. Fortunately, knowing Bahasa Indonesian will allow me to navigate daily life across the archipelago. Languages change over time based on who is using them. When people stop using the language, they inevitably die because people do not pass them on to the next generation. Politics and history also play big roles, as seen by the influence of colonization in many places. Indonesia is a unique case where it did not absorb the dutch language. Increases in technology and increased contact with speakers of different languages, so that languages begin to merge and common vocabulary becomes necessary for everyday exchanges. 
I think that geography, the why of where, can be an extremely valuable discipline for linguists to track, predict, and extrapolate changes in languages. For example, there are many ways to create maps that would help track migration and population and interactions between different cultures. Physical proximity seems like it would be a key indicator that a language has the potential to change. Language is always changing, though national languages may make such evolution hard to perceive. I think linguists can learn a lot about how language is being used informally through social media. In this informal, realtime, virtual space, linguists can study how people actually are engaging with language as forms of communication and notice trending slang words.