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Indonesian-Malay mutual intelligibility?

In dialectology, the study of dialects, the notion of mutual intelligibility has been used as the most reliable criterion to determine whether two linguistic communities speak different languages or different dialects of the same language

Setiono Sugiharto (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, October 25, 2008

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Indonesian-Malay mutual intelligibility?

In dialectology, the study of dialects, the notion of mutual intelligibility has been used as the most reliable criterion to determine whether two linguistic communities speak different languages or different dialects of the same language.

If two people are speaking different languages, they probably cannot understand each other. In this case, the different languages being spoken are not mutually intelligible. Thus, an Indonesian speaking Bahasa Indonesia (henceforth BI) will not probably be understood by a Chinese speaking Mandarin, and vice versa.

However, two people speaking distinct language varieties of the same language can normally understand each other very well. According to the mutual intelligibility criterion, people speaking Toronto English will have no difficulties in understanding those speaking Australian English and American English.

In a similar vein, using the same criterion, Indonesian-speaking communities will face no problems understanding Malaysian-speaking communities. Despite distinctive dialects, both BI and the Malaysian language are derived from the same root -- Austronesian language. They are normally called bahasa serumpun (language family).

The commonality of BI and the Malaysian language is succinctly expressed in Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia (A Standard Grammar of Indonesian) written by a group of noted Indonesian linguists such as Hasan Alwi, Soenjono Dardjowidjojo, Hans Lapoliwa and Anton M. Moeliono:

"Bahasa Malaysia ... jika ditinjau dari sudut pandang ilmu bahasa, merupakan bahasa yang sama juga dengan bahasa Indonesia." (The Malaysian language ... if viewed from a linguistic perspective is a language which is the same as the Indonesian language).

But, do these two language varieties of the same origin share commonalities, hence mutually intelligible?

Soenjono Dardjowidjojo, one of Indonesia's leading linguists, has recently put forward an intriguing claim that the commonalities shared by both BI and Malaysian are beginning to diminish.

"These two language varieties no more have a high degree of interchangeability". Malaysian people have difficulties in understanding our sinetron (soap opera) aired on Malaysia TV stations, and we also have problems in following their soap opera and news on TV, which are spoken in Malay," he said.

Dardjowidjojo, who was once a visiting professor at the Malaya University, Malaysia, advanced his claims on the basis of his recent observations of the Malay language in terms of its phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary.

In phonology, for example, the sound /a/ in Malaysian is always pronounced /e/ with a rising intonation, like the words kenape (why), kemane (where) and saye (I). In morphology, we can see different usage of suffixation. In BI it is normal to say kurangi in kurangi kecepatan, but is spoken instead as kurangkan laju in Malay. Both phrases mean "slow down the speed".

At a syntactic level, we may come across numerous phrases in Malaysian which we are probably not familiar with. Take the examples of such phrases as bilik air (washroom), pejabat pos (post office), and membeli-belah (to go shopping), among others.

As for the vocabulary, we also find ample words in Malaysian which either BI does not have or are obsolete. See for example the words tandas or jamban (toilet), kasut (sepatu), tarikh (time), sembang (chat), kereta (car), sejuk (cold), belacan (shrimp paste) and maklumat (announcement).

From these examples, Dardjowidjojo concluded that Malay is no longer BI's close language family.

While it could be true that the commonality of BI and Malaysian is diminishing for many Indonesian people in general, it is probably not true to say so for people who hail from Kalimantan, especially Central Kalimantan (Borneo) and other parts of Kalimantan.

And while some of the words from Malaysian are pronounced differently and are not familiar to most Indonesians, these words are pronounced in an identical way by the natives of Central Kalimantan and are familiar to them.

The natives of this Indonesian province pronounce the sound /a/ as /e/, as do the Malaysians. Thus, if one pays a visit to this province, it is not uncommon to hear such words as kemana (where), apa (what), siapa (who) as kemane, ape, and siape, respectively.

Words spoken in Malaysia such as jamban, sejuk and belacan are also spoken by the native Kalimantan.

In such instances, both BI and Malaysian share mutual intelligibility, the reason being that Central Kalimantan is geographically located near Malaysia. This allows language contact between the two peoples to continue extensively, thus maintaining the mutual intelligibility between the two languages.

The phenomenon of diminishing mutual intelligibility described above tells us that two different language varieties of the same language root -- as has been the case between BI and Malaysian -- despite sharing the same language history, may eventually become less intelligible and even unintelligible at all unless language contact occurs.

The influence of other dominant languages in both BI and Malaysian can also help contribute to the diminishing degree of mutual intelligibility as it can give rise to language shift.

More importantly, gradual unintelligibility between two language varieties can be accounted for by the speaker's attitude toward what language or language varieties they prefer to use both in daily and formal interaction.

The writer is chief-editor of Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and teaches English composition at Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta. He can be reached at setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id

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