Jakarta dialect
Unique in form and position
moessQn
Tjalie Robinson, in the second volume of his book Piekerans
van een Straatslijper (Reflections of a Wanderer) predicted that
once learned, people would write thick books about the Jakarta
dialect. In his days maybe this prediction sounded a little bit
bold, but today everything has materialized.
A substantial number of scholars have
busied themselves with the speech of
the 'indigenous' people of Indonesia's
capital. I put the word 'indigenous'
between apostrophe marks as we can
properly not speak of an indigenous
population in this city, as we shall see
soon.
Vulgar Latin
An impressive array of linguists, an
thropologists and historians reflected
on the Jakarta dialect, for example
Muhajir, Harimurti Kridalaksana,
Kocntjaraningrat, Abdulrachman
Surjomiharjo, Lance Castle, Ridwan
Saidi, Firman Muntaco, Toeti Adhitama
and Ben Anderson. Their statements
have been recorded by a team of the
Kompas daily of November 12, 1995,
but I shall quote only a few of these.
1 read these introductory remarks to
our friends as we were sitting the
living room of my friend Supardi,
contemplating the post-Ramadan
atmosphere around us.
'Isn't it remarkable that on the one
hand we have the Bahasa Indonesia as
standard language, but on the other
hand we cannot do without a dialect
called Jakartanese?' wondered Binsar
who had just arrived from Medan with
Lira, his wife. 'We can practically speak
of no other national language in the
world which is so closely tied up with
a dialect that is actually a kind of
pidgin* language.'
'Well,' I said, 'in history we have seen
many cases of vernaculars and even
vulgar tongues that eventually develo
ped into respectable media.'
'I was just going to say,' remarked
Tasti, 'French, for example, has develo
ped from Vulgar Latin. And yet my
father told me some time ago, that at
Dutch Secondary Schools, French was
always advertised as a language of
distinction and refinement. And even
at Elementary Schools extension after
noon courses were offered at low fees.'
Politeness
Suharni ventured: 'Some time ago
Jakartanese was looked down upon,
because it has such words as lu "you"
and gue "I". Parents of teenagers as
sured me that they wanted to prevent
at any cost the use of lu and gua in
polite conversation.'
'It is just a matter of history,' claimed
Supardi. 'These two words come from
the Hokkian dialect of Chinese, spo
ken by most Chinese immigrants
throughout the seventeenth century
and these pronouns are quite respecta
ble. They correspond to the Javanese
sampeyan and kula, so historically
there is nothing degrading about these
pronouns.'
'Yes, that is a good point,' I replied.
'After all, if we look at the history of
personal pronouns in languages like
French, Spanish, English, and so forth,
we see that shifts in use and applica
tion occur every time. Philip II of Spain
addressed Prince William of Orange
with vas corresponding to French vous
meaning "you" as a polite form. But
nowadays Spanish speakers use instead
usted, literally meaning "your grace"
(originally uestra merced).'
'Yes, and what about Sundanese?' Lira
put in. 'My Sundanese language
teacher informed us, his students, that
the word anjeun is no longer used as a
polite address. It actually used to mean
"your grace", but nowadays a person
would get startled if you addressed him
or her with anjeun.
Instead, other words are employed, like
bapa, ibu, akang, et cetera.
'That's correct,' confirmed Supardi.
'My mother used to berate me for
using anjeun either to my parents or
to strangers.'
Ngapain di situ?
'But now we'd better look at other
parts of the Jakarta dialect,' suggested
my wife. 'What shall we say about the
suffix -in? We know that this is of Bali
nese origin, because the Jakartanese of
old had a lot of Balinese immigrants
among them. But is this suffix of any
use in modern Indonesian?'
'Well, we could call -in a stylistic
suffix,' said Suparto. 'It gives a certain
style and a certain connotation to a
phrase. If you use ngapa-in instead of
sedang mengapal (what is he doing),
we are reminded that the speaker
actually does not quite agree with the
person doing something. I once heard
somebody being told that his friend
had gone to P., an obscure town. Spon
taneously this particular person exclai
med: Ngapain di situ(What should he
be doing there?)'
'This goes to say,' my wife commented,
'that -in has actually a very complex
meaning. Suppose you were to say in
English: It is really a shame! Younger
people would use the form malu-malu-
in, which is more forceful than stan
dard Indonesia memalukan.'
'All in all,' I wound up our little discus
sion, 'we can see that both standard
Indonesian or Bahasa Indonesia and
Jakartanese have a bright future, provi
ded they complement each other.
Jakartanese will, for sure, enrich our
national idioms and vocabulary. We do
not have to be afraid of the Bahasa
Indonesia ever going to be a pidgin
language, as long as each contribution
to the national medium will get its
rightful place.'
Pidgin is a language which mostly
originates in trading posts, containing
elements of different languages.
In harbor towns, for example, traders
of various nationalities developed a
pidgin in order to be able to commu
nicate with each other (ed.
14
Tekst: Timbul Winarto
