Language Shift and Language Maintenance in Indonesia

Language Shift and Language Maintenance in Indonesia

Simon Musgrave
Monash University

Abstract

Indonesia is a large nation in terms of both geography and population, and a very
large number of languages are spoken within its territory. Historically,
multilingualism was and is the norm in many parts of the archipelago, and common
even in areas where one language dominates. The emergence of a unitary state with a
national language after World War 2 has exerted pressure towards greater uniformity,
but the shifts which are taking place are best viewed as changing patterns of
multilingualism, rather than as shifts of large populations from one language to
another. Such shifts in patterns of language use are occurring throughout the nation,
and are resulting in threats to the viability of some languages, especially in the eastern
part of the archipelago where there are many languages with small speaker
populations. The size of the language groups in the east also has consequences for
language maintenance. Although official policy recognises the right of different
language groups to maintain their languages and cultures, resources for such activities
are scarce and the large ethnolinguistic communities in the west, where several
languages have speaker numbers in the millions, have been more successful in
accessing resources and institutional support which assist language maintenance. In
contrast, speaker groups in the eastern part of Indonesia have limited access to
resources available for language maintenance, although recent funding initiatives by
organisations based in Europe have at least assisted in drawing attention to the
problems faced in that region.


1. Introduction1

The Republic of Indonesia is a very large nation with a correspondingly large
population and great linguistic diversity. The nation extends over almost 3,000
kilometres: from Banda Aceh at the western tip of Sumatera to Kupang in West Papua
is approximately 2,830 kilometres. Estimates vary, but the nation includes somewhere
in the region of 17,000 islands of which 6,000 are inhabited. This makes Indonesia the
14th largest nation on earth by land area. According to the national census of 2000, the
population then was 206,264,595 (Statistics Indonesia, accessed 24/08/08), making
Indonesia the fourth largest nation on earth by population. Ethnologue 15 (Gordon
2005) lists Indonesia as having 742 languages spoken within its borders, although
other sources suggest that the methodology adopted in this publication results in a
figure which is too high (Steinhauer 1994). On the basis of their figure, Ethnologue
makes Indonesia the 26th most linguistically diverse nation in the world.

The Republic of Indonesia has as its national language Bahasa Indonesia ('language of
Indonesia'), which is a standardised Malay variety. The period since the founding of

1 I am grateful to Michael Ewing, Yacinta Kurniasih and Howard Manns for discussion and comments
which assisted me in preparing this chapter, and to Aline Scott-Maxwell of the Asian Studies Research
Library, Monash University, for bibliographic assistance.

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the Indonesian nation, since 1945, has coincided with great changes in
communications and technology, and it is not surprising that knowledge and use of
the national language has increased over this period. While this has led to some
linguistic homogenisation and the process is continuing, I will suggest that this has
not led to a reduction in the richness of linguistic repertoires of individual speakers.
At the individual level, there have been processes of language shift, but such shifts
have taken place within existing patterns of multilingualism (within which I include
use of multiple registers of a single language).

There is a very significant linguistic divide between the western part of Indonesia and
the eastern part of the nation. As far east as Sumbawa, there are a number of
languages with large speaker numbers, and all of the languages are from the
Austronesian family. East of Sumbawa, most languages have only small speaker
populations and some non-Austronesian languages appear. These languages are the
majority in West Papua, but they also are present in, for example, North Halmahera
and in the Timor-Alor-Pantar region. Historical evidence suggests that as recently as
the early nineteenth century a non-Austronesian language may have been spoken as
far west as Sumbawa (Donohue 2007). This linguistic divide naturally has
consequences for sociolinguistic change. I will suggest in this chapter that processes
of language shift are quite similar in both parts of Indonesia, but that the small size of
ethnolinguistic groups in the eastern part of the nation means that language
maintenance is much less likely to occur or to succeed in the east.

In the following section, I present a very brief summary of the linguistic history of the
Indonesian archipelago. I will then present some quantitative evidence regarding
trends in language use over the last forty years, followed by a more qualitative
analysis of the current situation in two areas: Java in the west and Central Maluku in
the east. In the final section of the chapter, I summarise the main points of the
discussion and speculate about the future prospects for the linguistic situation in
Indonesia.

2. Historical Perspective

The Austronesian expansion had included the Indonesian archipelago as far as the
borders of Melanesia by approximately 1500 BC, that is, 3,500 years before the
present (Bellwood 1995). Archaeological evidence makes it clear that the region was
inhabited prior to the arrival of the Austronesian people, and the general assumption is
that those inhabitants spoke languages related to the non-Austronesian (‘Papuan’)
languages of New Guinea. The existing inhabitants were supplanted to the extent that
only very limited linguistic traces of them remained: possibly the extinct language of
Tambora (Donohue 2007), and certainly the languages of North Halmahera and
Timor-Alor-Pantar. The Austronesian presence never extended far from the coast on
New Guinea, and even there it is quite limited. The non-Austronesian languages of
West Papua can therefore be taken as representative of a continuous heritage from
pre-Austronesian times. There is debate as to whether the non-Austronesian languages
of Halmahera and Timor-Alor-Pantar represent a similar continuous presence or
whether they are the result of later migration of Papuan people into Austronesian
areas (see Wurm 1975 for discussion of the Timor-Alor-Pantar situation, Platenkamp
1990, Voorhoeve 1994 and Bellwood 1998 for Halmahera, and McWilliam 2007 for
recent anthropological arguments).

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The linguistic situation which existed by the time of European contact with the region
at the start of the sixteenth century had been shaped by two closely related factors: the
types of political organisation which had arisen, and by previous trading activity.
Large polities, recognised and mentioned as such by outsiders, came into existence in
Sumatera and Java (Brown 2003: 11-28). As far as is known, these polities were not
tightly organised; nevertheless the relative linguistic uniformity in these areas surely
owes something to the existence of such groupings. In contrast, eastern Indonesia
lacked larger political groupings, and, when they did exist, they were even less tightly
organised. For example, the sultanate of Tidore (an island just to the west of
Halmahera) exerted control as far south as Ambon and Buru Islands at times (Andaya
1993), but its non-Austronesian language did not spread. The second major factor,
trade, was closely linked to the first. The spices native to the archipelago, especially
cinnamon and cloves, were highly desirable trade goods and there is evidence that
they were traded as far as the Middle East before the start of the Common Era. Trade
with China and India became important in the first millennium (Brown 2003: 13-17,
Wolters 1967), and the new polities in the Indonesian archipelago were partly
motivated by the desire to control trade routes and ports. Trade which extended
throughout the archipelago required a lingua franca. The Straits of Malacca, the
narrow passage between Sumatera and peninsular Malaysia, was a key point in the
trade system, and Malay, the language spoken there, came to be accepted as a
language of wider communication (Sneddon 2003a: 35ff). In some areas, so-called
Bazaar Malay was used only for inter-ethnic communication, but in other areas its use
spread to other domains and finally resulted in creole and post-creole varieties, as in
Ambon (Grimes 1991) and Manado (Prentice 1994).

European control of the region came in the sixteenth century. Portuguese ships
reached Malacca in 1511 and Maluku in 1512 (Brown 2003: 33). A Portuguese-based
creole was widely used in ports across the region thereafter and its use persisted after
the Portuguese yielded control to the Dutch early in the seventeenth century (Sneddon
2003a: 79-80). These new European arrivals quickly realised the importance of Malay
as a common language across the region. Even in areas where a single language was
used across a large area, such as Java, the Dutch preferred to use Malay as the
interlanguage between colonisers and colonised, and Dutch was used very little. The
Protestant missionaries who accompanied Dutch rule chose to use Malay as the
language of religious instruction, and this choice had important effects.2 A division
between so-called Low Malay (or Bazaar Malay) and High Malay was entrenched,
and the adoption of High Malay for religious teaching motivated moves towards a
standardisation of that variety (Sneddon 2003a: 84-85).

When nationalist movements began in Indonesia early in the twentieth century, the
question of language was a difficult one. It was considered essential that a unitary
state of Indonesia should have a single national language, but which language to
choose was not immediately obvious. Javanese was the language with the greatest
number of native speakers, but it was scarcely spoken outside of Java, and not even
universal across that island. In addition, choosing Javanese as the national language

2 Islam had spread across the archipelago several centuries earlier and with it, some knowledge of
Arabic. The language, however, was and is restricted to one domain of use and has had little impact on
the language situation aside from a large number of loan words which occur in Indonesian (and in
many other languages also).

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would carry a message of Javanese dominance in the new political structure, at a time
when national unity was being sought. The only viable alternative was seen to be
Malay, which was already known widely in the region (in one form or another), and
which had already succeeded as a language of administration under the Dutch.
Therefore the Second Indonesian Youth Conference of 1928 adopted a resolution
which included the following clause:3

Kami putera dan puteri Indonesia menjunjung bahasa persatuan, Bahasa
Indonesia.
We, the sons and daughters of Indonesia, uphold the language of unity, the
language of Indonesia.

The language was given a new name, but it was not a new language: it was the High
Malay which already existed (Sneddon 2003a: 102). The Republic of Indonesia
declared independence in 1945, but it was 1949 before the status of the new nation
was fully recognized. Since then, Bahasa Indonesia has been the national language,
the language of administration and education, and the language of the national media.
What speakers mean by the term bahasa Indonesia is, however, not straightforward.
There is an approved national standard set out in Alwi et al (1998), but this variety is
used only in the most formal contexts. Sneddon (2003b) has argued that a diglossic
situation exists, with the formal standard having the status of the high code and a
colloquial variety, or perhaps more accurately, a range of colloquial varieties, having
low status (see also Ewing 2005). While the constitution of the Republic of Indonesia
accords Bahasa Indonesia the status of national and official language, it also
guarantees the preservation of “those vernaculars which are properly maintained by
their speaker” (Explication of Chapter XV, Article 36, as cited by Nababan 1985).

This brief account of the linguistic history of Indonesia has, I hope, made it clear that
some degree of multilingualism has long been the norm in the region. Any area which
had trading contacts beyond the most local would have been exposed to Bazaar or
Low Malay (and possibly other lingue franche) and any area which experienced
interaction with the Dutch colonial authorities would have had contact with some
variety of Malay and very likely both High and Low varieties. In addition, areas of
higher linguistic diversity, especially in the eastern part of the nation, always had a
greater need for interethnic communication and the concomitant linguistic
accommodations. Included in this array of elements which might be included in an
individual’s linguistic repertoire, if that individual came from the area including Java,
Bali and Lombok, was knowledge of a complex speech level system, enlarging
linguistic repertoires still further (for Javanese, see Wolff and Poedjosoedarmo 1982,
for Balinese, Clynes 1995, for Sasak [Lombok] see Nothofer 2000).

Another factor which has complicated the language situation in Indonesia since
independence has been the government’s policy of encouraging internal migration or
transmigrasi (see Rigg 1991: 80-108). The results of this policy can be seen in data
extracted from the 1990 national census, which shows that Javanese was spoken by
more than 10% of the population in eight provinces outside the island of Java on
Sumatera and Kalimantan (Steinhauer 1994, Table 6). Although Javanese were the

3
It is interesting to note that some speakers at this conference used Dutch (Sneddon 2003:
101).

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ethnic group most affected by transmigrasi¸ substantial numbers of speakers of other
languages, for example Buginese, have also been spread across the nation. The
increased necessity for inter-ethnic communication which results can be considered as
another historical factor which has contributed to processes of language shift which
can be seen today.

3. The impact of the national language – quantitative data

Various questions about language use were asked in the Indonesian censuses made in
1971, 1980 and 1990. No such questions were included in the 2000 census and it is
therefore not possible to analyse trends beyond 1990. A careful analysis of the data
over the three censuses just mentioned was carried out by Steinhauer (1994), and that
work is the source of data for the figures to be presented below.4

Two aspects of the data are of interest in the present context: the extent of the
adoption of Bahasa Indonesia amongst the population, and the number of first
language speakers of various languages. There are problems in interpreting both of
these types of data. In the first case, the census asked slightly different questions of
the respondents on each occasion. The major problem, however, is in knowing what
value to give to the responses of those who did claim to speak Indonesian. It is likely
that respondents felt some pressure to exaggerate their abilities, as using the national
language could be viewed as a mark of good citizenship. In addition, it is not clear
whether census takers or respondents distinguished between knowledge of Bahasa
Indonesia, the standardised national language, and knowledge of other Malay
varieties. For example, would a speaker of Manado Malay (but not of Bahasa
Indonesia) answer ‘Yes’ to the census question? As Steinhauer (1994) comments, we
can only assume that these factors did not change significantly over the period in
question.5 For the second type of data, the interpretative problem is due to the way
that the results were reported by the Badan Pusat Statistik (the Central Statistical
Agency, now known as Statistics Indonesia). For the question about knowledge of a
regional language, the published results report for only the eight largest languages; all
others are grouped together as ‘others’. The results allow us to see some overall trends
in the use of these regional languages, but we can only guess at the trends which
might show up in the case of the many smaller languages.

Figure 1 shows the absolute number of speakers of Indonesian reported for the three
censuses, divided into three age groups.


4
More detailed analysis of the data from the 1980 census is presented in Masinambow and
Haenen (2002), but the absence of trend data makes the discussion presented there less useful for
present purposes.
5
The issues concerning how speakers understand the extension of the language name
mentioned previously are of course also relevant.

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Figure 1


It is clear that the number of speakers increased over the 19 year period in all age
groups, but especially in the 10 – 49-year-old age bracket. However, the overall
population of the nation also increased over the same period, so it is useful to also
consider Figure 2, which shows the percentage of the population who claimed to be
speakers of Indonesian.
Figure 2




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This figure, unlike Figure 1, shows that the proportion of people with knowledge of
Bahasa Indonesia was lowest in the youngest age group. This reflects the fact that in
many places another language was the home language and exposure to and learning of
Indonesian did not start until school. This figure also shows that the rate of increase in
the middle age bracket slowed a little between 1980 and 1990. This can probably be
attributed to the fact that the percentage was already very high. By 1990, in specific
demographic groups, knowledge of Indonesian was approaching 100%: For urban
males aged between 10 and 49, the figure was 98.8% and for females it was 96.7%.

Figure 3 shows the percentage of the population who were first language speakers of
the eight major languages, Indonesian, and the ‘other’ category comparing 1980 with
1990.

Figure 3

The important points to note here are that only two of the eight major languages
increased their percentage of speakers: Sundanese and Banjarese. The ‘other’
category also shows a small increase, and Indonesian a larger one. In percentage
terms, the increases for Sundanese and for the ‘other’ languages are small: 3.3% and
0.6% respectively. On the other hand, the percentage increases for Bahasa Indonesia
and Banjarese are much larger at 30.3% and 63.6%. This huge increase for Banjarese
represents an additional 1.3 million speakers. Steinhauer (1994) suggests that this
increase is due to a rapid decline in the use of many smaller local languages in South
and Central Kalimantan and shift by the speakers to the local language of wider
communication, Banjarese, rather than to the national language. If this interpretation
is correct, we would expect that a similar shift might be happening in many areas in
eastern Indonesia; such a shift not being visible in the statistics because the local
languages of wider communication are too small to be separately reported in the

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statistics. The discussion of the language situation in Central Maluku in the following
section will confirm this prediction.6

[insert Figure 4 about here]

Figure 4 compares the overall change in the proportion of first language speakers for
each group with the change in the youngest age group represented in both censuses, 5
– 9 years of age. In this figure, we can see evidence that transmission of regional
languages to the youngest generation was declining over the decade in question. Of
the language groups which showed an increased proportion of first language speakers,
only ‘other’ and Indonesian showed a greater increase in the youngest group than in
the overall population, and as already noted, the figure for ‘other’ must be viewed
with caution. On the other hand, all of the groups which showed an overall decline in
percentage had a greater percentage decline in the youngest group, with the exception
of Batak, where the two figures are almost the same. Even Banjarese, the one regional
group with a very large increase in its overall proportion, showed a rather lower rate
of change in the youngest group. This data therefore shows that Bahasa Indonesia was
the only language which both increased its proportion of first language speakers in the
overall population and in the youngest age group, suggesting a significant overall
shift of speakers to that language.


4. The impact of the national language – qualitative accounts

The statistical data just presented give some insight into processes of language shift
resulting from the impact of the national language in Indonesia, but this picture needs
to be supplemented with more detailed examinations of the situation of individual
languages and their speakers. This is particularly true for small languages from
eastern Indonesia, which disappear into an amorphous ‘other’ category in the
statistics, and I will discuss the situation in Central Maluku in section 4.2. But it is
also useful to consider in a qualitative way what is happening to large language
groups, and in section 4.1 I will therefore briefly report some current research on the
situation of Javanese. While certain commonalities can be seen across these two
situations, the great differences between the sociolinguistic situation in the western
and eastern parts of Indonesia mean that the local effects of language shift are rather
different in the two locations and that the possibilities for language maintenance are
very different.

4.1 Java

Of the eight languages for which individual speaker numbers are provided in the
census data, three are spoken on the island of Java: Javanese, Sundanese and
Madurese. In this section, I present information from recent and ongoing research on
the current status of the Javanese language in three different locations and in different
social settings. One researcher (Kurniasih 2006) examines the linguistic repertoires of

6
Steinhauer suggests two additional reasons why the 'others' category should be treated
cautiously. Many of these languages are spoken in the most remote areas of the nation and therefore
they are likely to be lagging in any shift to the national language, and there may be classification
problems in data.

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school age children and their parents in Yogyakarta (Central Java), considered the
centre of Javanese culture. Goebel (2003) analyses code choices in spontaneous
interactions recorded in Semarang (Central Java), and Manns (2007, work in
progress) is studying the construction of identity through language choices amongst
young people in Malang (East Java). In each situation, there is evidence that shift
from Javanese to Indonesian is taking place, but there is also evidence which shows
that Javanese continues to be used by many speakers and that there is some
institutional support for those who wish to maintain the language.

The data examined in the previous section showed that (at least up until 1990)
Javanese was the language with the greatest number of first language speakers in
Indonesia, but that the percentage of the population who spoke it as their first
language was declining. This decline has been noted and discussed in local
newspapers, radio and television shows as well as in academic forums (Kurniasih
2006). Prior to 1990, regional languages were used as the medium of instruction in the
first three grades of primary school in many places, and this was common in
Javanese-speaking areas. Since 1990, it is government policy that Indonesian should
be used as the language of education from kindergarten through to university.
However, another government policy was promulgated in various forms between
1989 and 1993 which requires the teaching of one compulsory local content subject
and up to three optional subjects in the primary education curriculum alongside the
national curriculum. This policy has allowed Javanese to reappear in schools, but as a
taught subject rather than as the medium of instruction. In the Special Region of
Yogyakarta, Javanese has been a compulsory subject in schools from year 1 to year 9
since 1995, allotted two teaching hours per week, and in Central Java it has even
become a compulsory subject for students in years 10 – 12 of high school since 2006
(Kurniasih 2006). It is of particular interest that the relevant departmental policies
explicitly state that both the Low and High forms of the language will be taught
(Kurniasih 2006).

Kurniasih’s research (Kurniasih 2006) looks at patterns of language use for school-
age children (11 and 14 year olds) at home and at school, and also the language use of
the children’s parents when talking to their children and when talking to their social
networks. The strongest trend emerging from this research is that middle class parents
and children are much more likely to use Indonesian than their working class
counterparts. An additional finding is that mothers and female children are more
likely to use Indonesian than their male counterparts. Very strikingly, only middle
class children were observed to use only Indonesian with no Javanese at all, and five
times more girls than boys showed this behaviour. Kurniasih’s data also suggests that
this is to some extent a conscious choice being made by parents: in interacting with
their social networks, no parents used Indonesian alone, but in speaking to their
children, 88% of middle class mothers and 39% of middle class fathers used no
Javanese (no working class parents behaved in this way). The data also suggests that
the High variety of Javanese, kromo, is less likely to be a part of the linguistic
repertoire of middle class children. While the language use patterns of working class
children typically include kromo, whether or not some Indonesian is included also, the
middle class children’s usage tends towards either Low Javanese, ngoko, with
Indonesian, or Indonesian alone. Again, the data suggest that choices by parents may
be influencing the children’s usage patterns: in their social networks, the middle class

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parents incorporate kromo (95% for mothers and 98% for fathers), but in speaking to
their children, these figures drop enormously (to 8% and 37% respectively).

Some of the findings of Kurnisaih (2006) have correspondences in Goebel’s research
on code choice in urban neighbourhoods of Semarang on the north coast of Central
Java (Goebel 2005). Goebel examines interactions between males and Javanese is
used frequently, in line with Kurniasih’s findings that males are more likely to use
Javanese than females across all social classes. Goebel reports the use of both ngoko
and kromo Javanese in various settings, but found that symmetrical exchanges were
the norm rather than the asymmetrical exchanges reported by previous researchers
(for example Wolff and Poedjosoedarmo 1982). His interpretation of the data is that
ngoko is used to index familiarity, while kromo and also Indonesian are used to index
a greater social distance between the interactants. Goebel also observed the use of
ngoko Javanese by ethnic non-Javanese in familiar settings, going against the normal
opinion that Indonesian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. The data come
from two neighbourhoods in Semarang with different socioeconomic profiles, and
Goebel also notes that the neighbourhood which is more working class in character
affords greater opportunities for interaction and therefore a higher level of familiarity
is the norm. His results therefore complement those of Kurniasih, and throw
additional light on those earlier results. Both kromo Javanese and Indonesian can be
used for certain functions, those associated with communication with less familiar
interactants7, and there is some sign of blurring as to the function of the two languages
in such situations. This process is more likely to be associated with middle class
speakers than with working class speakers (cf. Syahdan 2000, on the use of
Indonesian by educated Sasaks).

Goebel’s data show that Javanese retains great vitality in many contexts. That this is
the case even in the language use of young people is also shown by data from Malang
in East Java (Manns 2007, personal communication). The research in question is
examining the impact of the Jakarta variety of Indonesian on the language used by
young adults in an urban environment. Many of the speakers studied in this research
are university students who aspire to modernity – they are often technologically
literate and they aim for careers in areas such as economics. Even in this environment,
however, Javanese still has a place and is used for various purposes such as
establishing an identity as Javanese (rather than Indonesian). Javanese is used as a
language of familiarity in some contexts, as in Goebel’s study, but in line with
Kurniaish’s findings, such use is almost always of ngoko. Javanese can be used even
in a situation where the means of communication itself might be expected to exert
pressure towards language use which would be seen as modern. Thus, Javanese can
turn up in bahasa chat, the variety used in online messaging (Manns 2007).

The various studies discussed here suggest that the proportion of the population of
Java who acquire and use Javanese is declining. There is a language shift to
Indonesian taking place and this process is being led by middle class females. Against
this, the data also shows that the language is maintaining its hold on some domains of
use and retains vitality amongst at least some social groups. It also seems likely that
the first major impact of this process of language shift, if it continues, will be seen in

7 Manns (personal communication) reports that, at least to some degree, young people in Malang still
use kromo or, alternatively Indonesian, to index respect for age and status, even among familiars.

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