Detail from Borobudur
Indonesian is part of that great language family group known as Austronesian which is the most widely spread language group on the planet. Stretching as far west as Madagascar and a far east at Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as it is known by it original Polynesian settlers.
The Hawaiian language, for example still shares words with modern Indonesian: Hawaiian, ahi = Indonesian, api (fire, though I was told that in Seram the tool used to make the fire is called ‘ahi’), Hawaiian, maka = Indonesian, mata (eye), Hawaiian, maki = Indonesian, mati (dead). The name ‘Hawai`i may be a cognate of ‘Java’, the name of Indonesia’s most populous island; you can see it in the ‘awa’ and the ‘ava’. On Seram there is the village of Wahai, perhaps yet another cognate. Also on Seram the prefix ‘wai’ is used to mean river and in Hawai`i it means ‘water’.
Back in the deep time when people pushed their sailing canoes off the beaches somewhere in the Indonesian archipelago they carried with them the roots of the Austronesian family group. They also carried the real roots of taro, banana, kukui, sugar cane, ti, and the other Polynesian “canoe” plants which are known to have their biological and evolutionary origins in Indonesia.
Thus the world is linked and it is always bigger and more connected than we might assume as first glance. The word moa has a long reach; it means ‘bird’ or ‘chicken’ and is still in use today in Madagascar, Aeotearoa, and Hawai`i.
The other lesson here is that language is, in and of itself, not static. Language is pliable and transforms over time. I like to think of it as a mental plastic; resilient, and absorbing. Perhaps there is no language which gives such a good example as this as Indonesian.
Modern Indonesian is rooted to Old Malay originating in southern Sumatra and spreading during the 7th through the 9th century under the Hindu Sriwijaya kingdom. Modern Malay came in to its own in the 13th and 14th centuries as a lingua franca (or trading language) when it was spread through the archipelago coincident with the spread of Islam.
That is how I think of Bahasa Indonesia; a commercial trading language at the core, having incorporated words from Sanskrit, Chinese, Arabic, and later Portuguese, Dutch, and English, with good portions of Javanese, Sundanese, Maduraese, Minankabauese and other far flung indigenous languages thrown in the mix for good measure.
Traveling the far reaches of the archipelago I always get the humbling impression that people speak two, three, or even four different languages. Modern Indonesian really is “unity in diversity“.
Jakarta, of course, is particularly interesting because it has always been, since the days of Batavia, a place where all these influences rubbed up against each other and mixed together, both metaphorically and physically.
The Betawi of Jakarta is a cultural result.
The Dutch actually got around to building a city in the eighteenth century when the walls surrounding Fort Batavia were finally pulled down and hauled up to Gambir. From this time onward, and especially in the early nineteenth century, Indonesian ethnic groups increasingly found their place in the life of Batavia, however marginal that may have been.
The Dutch, for administrative purposes and security reasons divided Batavia into small ethnic enclaves, or kampungs. But, as Abeyasekere states, “By the 1820s… …intermixing had gone so far that observers could no longer divide the Indonesian community into distinct ethnic groups. In the nineteenth century Indonesians born in Batavia generally came be called Orang Betawi, a recognition that the Indonesians of the city formed a distinct ethnic group”.
The cultural force which held the Orang Betawi together was their common faith of Islam; in fact they had a reputation of being fanatically Islamic. In the Dutch colonial world of Batavia which set the economic and social rules of the day this was at least something the Betawi had under their control and could claim as their own. They sent their children to Muslim schools. They avoided employment which would bring them into contact with Europeans.
They spoke their own language, a distinct dialect of Malay. From this, other distinct cultural practices evolved; wedding ceremonies, architecture, dress, music, dance, oral traditions, ondel-ondel, and Silat.
By the 1930s the growth of Batavia was so rapid that the Betawi were viewed as an ethnic minority in the very city which created them. Their culture persists in Jakarta today in their language, art, theatre and they came still be found, on a Saturday morning, practicing Silat.
Silat, Kampung Betawi, Jakarta, 2008
The urban scene has always been a hothouse of cultural evolution. In the case of Jakarta the crowding together of large numbers of people from widely diverse areas throughout the archipelago results in a blend of varied ethnic traditions mixing under the influence of the social stress of urban living and enhanced by the pressure of external cultural influences.
Abeyasekere notes how quickly new immigrants to the city become Jakartans.
It’s a cultural gado-gado.
“…language is the colour of our skin, in a way- it will never wash off. It isn’t necessarily about the language, it’s about the message, the perseverence of culture implied somewhere in the context.”
PROKEM: An Analysis of A Jakarta Slang. Thomas H. Slone. Masalai Press, Oakland, California, 2003. 95 pages.
What is a “ludling” you might ask?
The literal meaning of the term is “play-language”. Linguists use the term to describe languages created from ordinary languages “as the result of a transformation or series of transformations acting regularly on an ordinary language text, with the intent of altering form but not the content of the original message, for the purposes of concealment or comic effect”. Slone states in his Introduction to PROKEM that, “As such, ludlings exist as a subset of play languages, namely those that are formed by regular transformation of a standard, base language. Ludlings as well as most other slang languages retain the grammar of the base language”.
Oing-gay o-tay karta-jay o-tay uy-bay ome-say ice-ray.
What is this?
In the US, and perhaps in England, every school age child comes across this sooner or later. This is a ludling known as “Pig Latin” where the words are formed by taking a standard English word, transposing the initial part of the word to the end, and adding “ay”.
So the above is: Going to Jakarta to buy some rice.
Or something like that. I am a bit rusty on my Pig Latin as I probably have not spoken it since the fifth grade.
Slone defines Prokem as “a slang language that is spoken in Jakarta, primarily by youth who speak the Jakartan dialect of Indonesian. It most likely originated as a secret criminal language, but is today spoken by both high school and university students and by members of street gangs, preman, from which the name Prokem comes”.
Jakartan is a dialect of Indonesian and Prokem is a slang Jakartan.
Slang has its roots in puns, jokes, crime, sex, violence, politics, arcronyms, generational changes, fashion, “the scene”. It is the same for the beatniks, hippys, or surfers. To speak slang is an entrance ticket to a community which is often opposed to and out of the norm.
As Abayesekere notes:
“Some of the more well-to-do clearly felt that Western influence had most to teach about shaping a modern urban society. They watched Western films frequently and tried to keep in touch with trends abroad. This troubled many nationalists, who feared that Jakartans were absorbing all the worst aspects of Western culture. In 1952, Vice-President Hatta noted that Indonesia’s large cities were much influenced by Westerners: “In these places, most of our people just become imitators. As usual, the easiest thing to imitate is the shallow, the superficial…” He pus this down to the fact that, “most of our cities did not arise from our own society but rather as appendages of a foreign economy. These cities are not the centers of the creative activity of our own people but primarily distribution centers of foreign goods”.
In the Jakarta of the 1950s, Hatta’s remarks seemed to be supported by the appearance of the so-called ‘cross-boys’. These were gangs of youths who modeled themselves on the juvenile delinquents portrayed in Western films and who were usually associated with jeans and motor bikes. Some view them suspiciously as a sign of imported social decadence, but they also had much in common with the pemuda of the Revolution days. When martial law was introduced in 1957, the military authorities in Jakarta banned ‘cross-boy organization’, of which there seemed to be a large number: thirty-six were listed by name, including Cross-Boys Club, Deddy [sic] Boys Club, and James Dean Club. And for good measure, the wearing of jeans in public by anyone over the age of ten was forbidden. This was no hollow threat: arrests were subsequently made at cinemas.”
Slang emerges to meet the social surroundings.
Here are some examples as given by Slone.
“What does MBA [ Master of Business Administration ] mean?” (pun, riddle) Prokem = “Master by Accident and “Masih belum apa-apa.” (”Still nothing”).
APIK (acronym) : Indonesian = Akademi Pendidikan Il mu Keguruan [ "Training Academy of Science Teachers" ] Prokem = agak pikun ["rather senile"]
ANGGUN (acronymic redefinition of regular word meaning “well dressed”) in Prokem = angota ragunan, [ "ugly person, literally "member of the Ragunan Zoo" ].
SIMPATIK (another acronymic redefinition whose standard meaning is “congenial” or “sympathetic) in Prokem = simpanse pakai batik [ "chimpanzee dressed in batik" ].
CHICAGO Indonesian = Cikini, Kali Pasir, Gondangdia Lama; Prokem = Chicago, Illinois; three street names in Jakarta that form a triangular area and may have been a gang territory.
OPEC Indonesian = Organisasi Pedagang Ekonomi Cukupan; Prokem = Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Organization of Economic Tranders [providing] Just Enough).
These are just a small sample of Prokem which Slone cites in his book. There may be well over 4,000 words in the Prokem vocabulary; some words dropping away and new ones added. The book itself is a slim volume but rich in the technical understanding of where Prokem comes from, how it functions, and where it is going. It’s detail is thorough, educational, and entertaining. It shows the reach of Bahasa Indonesia; “the perseverence of culture implied somewhere in the context”.
Other Sites of Interest:
Kelas Bahasa: Huh? This is Indonesian?
TeakDoor: Leanring Indonesian Urban Slang (some good examples here).
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