Desi Anwar: Losing a Language

Jakarta Globe, Desi Anwar, April 30, 2010

According to an article in The New York Times, New York City is home to as many as 800 languages, many of them in danger of disappearing. This makes it a laboratory of world languages in decline. As official national languages tend to domi n ate because they are a country’s main tongue and English creeps into even the most remote corners of the world, many local languages are fast dying out.

New York, on the other hand, finds itself a Tower of Babel for all sorts of exotic languages and dialects brought in by immigrants who keep their languages alive, at least while there are enough people around who remember how to speak them.

Bukhari, a Persian language spoken by the Bukharian Jews of Central Asia, has more speakers in Queens than in Uzbekistan, the article said. Daniel Kaufman, a professor of linguistics at the City University of New York has addressed the problem by starting the Endangered Language Alliance to research the city’s exotic tongues. Kaufman found, for example, Husni Husain, 67, who speaks Mamuju, a language of West Sulawesi, which he learned as a child.

A large number of ethnic languages are fast disappearing as the original native speakers grow old and die, burying their languages with them. Efforts are being made by Kaufman and the alliance to record and identify these dying languages, which often have no written form, and to encourage native speakers to teach them to compatriots.

It’s always sad to hear about anything dying out. A language can only last, develop and thrive if it is used. In an increasingly globalized world, many languages are becoming strangers in their own homelands as indigenous cultures become marginalized and perhaps even abandoned altogether. Betawi used to be the spoken language in Jakarta. Now it is rarely heard except in the fringes among low-income native Jakartans. People living in Jakarta speak Bahasa Indonesia, except when they’re at home with their parents or back in their home villages.

Many of us are now brought up in a multicultural environment speaking or exposed to different languages through mixed marriages, upbringing, education and our social environment.

A language is a window to an identity, the speaker’s culture, character and tradition, even his or her general temperament, sense of humor and values. However, when the language you speak is different from that of your parents, that sense of continuity diminishes.

When my parents were alive they would speak to each other solely in the West Sumatran Minang language. Being born and raised in Bandung and having never been to their villages in West Sumatra, I naturally assumed it was their own special language, as everybody else around spoke the local Sundanese dialect or Indonesian with a Sundanese accent. My parents spoke to me in Bahasa. When we moved to England, they continued to speak to each other in Minang, while they switched to English with me as my Bahasa diminished with the passing years. So while my parents continued to hold on to their identity until they died, Minang through and through, I was not so clear.

I speak Bahasa to the family, but if people ask me where I’m from, if they are Indonesian I always say I’m Minang. I understand the Minang language. But I don’t speak it and have never lived where it’s spoken. My stomach cannot even tolerate the region’s spicy food.

Meanwhile, I have a niece who lives in Taiwan and speaks Mandarin, and another studying French in Paris. My sisters definitely don’t speak to them in Minang. No one among us professes any desire to live in the home village, though we are fiercely proud of it.

My good friend has an even more complicated identity. Her father is Batak from North Sumatra and speaks Batak with people from his side of the family, while her mother is German. She understands German when her mother speaks to her but rarely responds in that language. Similarly, she understands a bit of Batak but doesn’t really speak it and has never lived in the region. The languages she feels comfortable conversing in are Bahasa and English. She describes herself as either Batak or German whenever it is to her advantage, but for the most part, she feels neither.

As more and more of the older generation in the villages pass away, and more and more of the younger generation settle in the cities to work and raise their families, it is only a matter of time before local languages fade away for good — perhaps until they are rediscovered by a professor in New York who’s compiling a list of endangered languages.

Desi Anwar is a senior anchor and writer. She can be contacted at www.desianwar.com and www.dailyavocado.net.