Guru besar Malaysia memuji bahasa Indonesia

Menonton

Here’s a video dated 1 April 2022 from the weekly English talk show Hot Indonesia, produced by The Indonesia Channel. Dalton Tanonaka, originally from Hawaii, and the Indonesians Millie Lukito, and Farina Situmorang are the hosts of the 1 April 2022 show, which you can watch in full here (opens in a new tab).

Instead of watching the video you can also listen to the following audio clip:

Please note that the authors of «Baca Yuk!» do not share the opinion of Dalton, Millie, and Farina, but they do reflect a wide-spread anti-Malaysian sentiment among Indonesians. Of course the Malaysian side has also contributed to those sentiments, for instance by claiming Batik and Rendang as Malaysian.

Most importantly, the media executive Dalton Tanonaka, Millie Lukito, and Farina Situmorang (both entrepreneurs) are far from being experts in regards to the Malay language which is obvious from Millie’s claim that Indonesian and Malay only share “some similarities”, but are otherwise “very different”.

That Indonesian and Malay are in fact not that different is evident from the following video by the Youtuber Nihongo Matappu entitled NGETES ORANG MALAYSIA, “BATIK DAN RENDANG PUNYA SIAPA?” (Testing Malaysians on “Who owns Rendang and Batik?”). As Nihongo does not speak Malay, he conducts his interviews with Malaysians in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur using the Indonesian language, and apparently the Malaysians understand him just as good as he understands them. From his accent, the Malaysians immediately know that he is Indonesian, and there is at least one person in the interview (3:46) that accommodated the fact that he is Indonesian, by using bisa instead of boleh for ‘can’.

You don’t have to watch this video as it is not part of this lesson, but it is very interesting to see how the Malaysians react to his questions. The video is almost 15 minutes long, but you can skip the first two minutes.

Jawab Pertanyaan

What do you know about the relationship between bahasa Indonesia, the language of Indonesia, and bahasa Melayu, the language of Malaysia. Try to answer the following questions, preferably in Indonesian:

1. Dari mana asal-usul bahasa Melayu?
2. Berapa banyak penutur bahasa Melayu?
3. Apa kesamaan dan perbedaan antara bahasa Melayu dengan bahasa Indonesia?
4. Sejak kapan ada bahasa Indonesia?

Malay Language Quiz

Let’s see how much you know about the relationship between Malay and Indonesian. Don’t forget to always click the check button and read the information provided in blue print.

Indonesian vs Malay

Indonesian and Malaysian are considered two separate languages, but this is more a political decision just like Danish and Norwegian (and to a certain extent also Swedish), who all descended from Old Norse and are largely mutually intelligible. The same is true for standard Indonesian and standard Malaysian, which both are Malay dialects.

Besides standard Malaysian, there are about a dozen of other Malay dialects spoken in Malaysia, and even more in Indonesia on the islands of Kalimantan (Borneo), Sulawesi, Kupang, Papua, and on the islands of the Moluccas. Sumatra alone has at least 20 Malay dialects. These, however, do not enjoy the status as national languages, but only as regional languages.

Now read the Wikipedia article Comparison of Indonesian and Standard Malay.

When did Malay become Indonesian?

The Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda) was a declaration made by young Indonesian nationalists in the Youth Congress (Kongres Pemuda I) that was held in Jakarta from 30 April to 2 May 1926. They proclaimed three ideas: one motherland (bertumpah darah yang satu, tanah Indonesia), one nation (berbangsa yang satu, bangsa Indonesia) and one language (bahasa persatuan, bahasa Melayu).

This is the original text from the First Youth Congress using the old spelling system where u was written oe, c was written tj, j was written dj, and y was written j:

During the Second Youth Congress that took place on 27–28 October 1928 in Jakarta, it was decided to rename bahasa Melayu to bahasa Indonesia.

The Dutch naturally opposed this idea, and the name change from Malay to Indonesian only became official in 1942 after the Dutch were ousted from the Netherlands East Indies, which then was occupied by the Japanese.

Background Info

Today’s topic deals with two abbreviations: ASEAN and PPSMI:

ASEAN

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a political and economic union of 10 member states in Southeast Asia, which promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic, political, security, military, educational, and sociocultural integration between its members and countries in Asia-Pacific. The member states are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Timor Leste and Papua Niu Gini have applied for membership.

PPSMI

Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Sains dan Matematik Dalam Bahasa Inggeris (PPSMI) (the teaching and learning of science and mathematics in English) is a government policy aimed at improving the command of the English language among pupils at primary and secondary schools in Malaysia. In accordance to this policy, the Science and Mathematics subjects are taught in the English medium as opposed to the Malay medium used before. This policy was introduced in 2003 by the then-Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad. PPSMI has been the subject of debate among academics, politicians and the public alike, which culminated to the announcement of the policy’s reversal in 2012 by the Deputy Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin. (Source: Wikipedia)

Dengarkan!

Listening is an interpretive skill. Listening comprehension is largely based on the amount of information listeners can retrieve from what they hear, and the inferences and connections that they can make.

Step 1: Listen to the Audio – No Reading! Simply listen to the audio alone. …
Step 2: Repeat! It’s not time to look at the text just yet. …
Step 3: Listen to the Audio while answering the following questions:

Listen to the Audio while answering the following questions. You are still not allowed to read!

Listen to the Audio while answering the following questions. You are still not allowed to read! Don’t forget to always click the check button (“Periksa”) and read the information provided in blue print.

Bacaan

Step 4: Listen to the full Audio while reading the text. …

Bahasa Melayu menjadi bahasa ASEAN?

1. Menteri Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Nadiem Makarim menolak usulan Malaysia untuk menjadikan bahasa Melayu sebagai bahasa kedua ASEAN. Menurut pemerintah Indonesia, bahasa Indonesia lebih tepat dijadikan bahasa kedua ASEAN. Sebetulnya Indonesia juga tidak memerlukan hal itu karena secara otomatis bahasa Indonesia akan menjadi bahasa utama dunia. Soalnya di media sosial pun pengguna dari Indonesia sudah mencapai ranking empat dunia. Lagi pula bahasa Indonesia juga sudah ditetapkan dalam konstitusi; namanya tidak bisa diubah misalnya menjadi bahasa Melayu-Indonesia. Tidak bisa sama sekali karena terikat juga oleh sejarah Sumpah Pemuda.
2. […]


Logo ASEAN (Foto: Antara)

3. Krisis bahasa Melayu yang terjadi bukan urusan Indonesia, melainkan masalah dalam negeri Malaysia. Bahasa Melayu ternyata belum bisa menjadi tuan rumah di negara Malaysia sendiri. Berikut ini pendapat guru besar Universitas Kebangsaan Malaysia:
4. Selepas merdeka, kita membina legasi baru, tetapi kita juga yang meruntuhkannya, antaranya PPSMI dan sekalian yang lain. Tetapi di Indonesia, legasi itu, yang lampau itu, malah sebelum mereka merdeka lagi, yaitu pada tahun 1928 mereka sudah mencipta bahasa Indonesia sebagai bahasa yang akan menyatupadukan rakyat Indonesia apabila merdeka nanti. Jadi…, dan setelah Indonesia merdeka pada tahun empat puluh lima legasi itu sampai hari ini bertambah kuat semakin hari. Jadi, di Indonesia bukan saja setiap rakyat dia fasih berbahasa negara. Mereka bangga, mereka sayang, mereka taat kepada bahasa negara mereka, tetapi di Malaysia ini malang sekalilah, masih ada warga negara yang tak boleh berbahasa negara.

Nonton Yuk!

Step 5: Now watch the full Video, in which the Malaysian politician and Emeritus Professor in Ethnolinguistics (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia), Dr. Teo Kok Seong, praises the Indonesian language. …

A Misunderstanding?

Apparently, the Malaysian Prime Minister never suggested making Malaysian the second official ASEAN language. What he said is that not only Malaysia, but also some neighbouring countries such as Indonesia, Brunei, Singapura, southern Thailand, southern Philippines Filipina and parts of Cambodia, are also using Malay (cited from the Malaysian newspaper Berita Harian).

So all the fuss is really about nothing, and fortunately E Aminudin Aziz, the Director of the Indonesian Language Center (Badan Bahasa), is now considering Malaysia’s idea.

What is Malay?

The Malay people are a seafaring people who used to live in coastal areas, but also inlands along navigable rivers. They were predominantly traders and often had to import rice because the fertile lands are usually in the volcanic highlands whereas the soil along the coast and rivers is often swampy. As traders they traded their goods into almost every corner of the Indian ocean, and also in the South China Sea and in the waters of eastern Indonesia. They even inhabited the island of Madagascar about 1200 years ago. Genetic and linguistic evidence points to Kalimantan (Borneo) as their place of origin. The distance between Borneo and Madagascar is 6400 km (4000 miles).

But not all Malays are coastal dwellers. The people of Minangkabau and Kerinci from the island of Sumatra, for instance, are Malays who at one point in time settled in the highlands of the Bukit Barisan mountain range where they became rice farmers, but also gold diggers. Other Malay groups such as the Kubu (also known as Orang Rimba or Suku Anank Dalam) separated from their original communities and moved into the jungles of Sumatra where they became hunters and gatherers. They collected forest products and had developed a barter system with the coastal Malays. Their language is very similar to Indonesian or Malay.

As traders the Malays settled in many different places. About 15% of all Indonesians, roughly 30 million people, are ethnic Malays. However, statistics often only count Malays in Sumatra and in Kalimantan and hence arrive at a much lower number of only 10 million speakers. But they do not include the language of the Minangkabau people (7 million), Kerinci (300,000), Betawi Malay (5 million), Manado Malay (900,000), Ambon Malay (1,400,000), Ternate Malay (700,000), Papuan Malay (500,000), Kupang Malay (700,000), and other Malay speaking groups.

Linguistically, Minangkabau is a Malay dialect, but it is often regarded as a separate language. There is no clear consensus where the line is between dialects and languages. There are also some languages where the status as a Malay dialect is disputed. Examples are Banjarese, spoken in Kalimantan, and Rejang, spoken in Sumatra. Banjarese is an important regional language which also serves as a vehicle for interethnic communication. It is spoken natively by over 4 million speakers, and another 6 million people speak it as a second language. The general consensus among linguists is that the two languages do not belong to the Malayic languages, and that the similarities between Banjarese and Rejang with Malay are due to close contact with Malay speakers.

Malays also live in southern Thailand where they speak Pattani Malay (3 million), in Brunei Darussalam (270,000), and 60% of East Timorese (800,000) speak Indonesian which nowadays is often referred to as Malay, but the Malay speaking East Timorese are of course not considered ethnic Malays).

As traders the Malay had close contact with the outer world, and they were the first to become Muslims. There are some non-Muslim Malays, but about 99% of all ethnic Malays have embraced Islam.

The Malay language was spoken natively for hundreds of years and spread from Sumatra all over what is often considered as the Malay World or Alam Melayu. It was used as a Lingua Franca and tool of interethnic communication. In Indonesia, Malay was heavily supported by the Dutch and became, next to Dutch, the most important language in the archipelago. The Dutch had an aversion against the many local variants of Malay spoken in Indonesia that they disparagingly referred to as Pasar (Market) Malay or “Low Malay”. The Dutch promoted Malacca-Johor Malay used in Riau-Lingga as “High Malay” to become a medium of communication between the Dutch and local population. The language was also taught in schools all over Indonesia.

What is now known as bahasa Indonesia has its origin in this “High Malay”, which over time has evolved into a modern version of Malay, which in 1928 was renamed as bahasa Indonesia.

High Malay was also promoted by the Dutch and later became the national language of Malaysia, known as bahasa Malaysia (Malaysian), which is also often referred to as bahasa Melayu (Malay).

This confusion is why Indonesians reject the idea that they speak Malay when in fact Indonesian is nothing but a 20^th century name for Malay spoken by Indonesians in Indonesia.

In Indonesia, Indonesian is spoken by nearly all Indonesian citizens regardless of their ethnic background. Many Indonesians speak it alongside a regional language, but the majority of Indonesians feel more comfortable using Indonesian, especially when it becomes the medium of writing.

In Malaysia, Malaysian (or Malay) is not universally spoken. Over 22% of all Malaysians are ethnic Chinese, and many of them are reluctant to speak Malay, which is very different from Indonesia where all ethnic Chinese speak Indonesian and often no longer speak Chinese.

Is Indonesian spoken in rural or otherwise remote areas?

There are some regions in rural Jawa and in rural, non coastal areas in Papua where there are still some people who do not speak or speak very little Indonesian. These are mainly elderly people. Virtually every young Indonesian, even in remote areas, attends school where the medium of education is Indonesian.

In June 2022 I visited Jayapura in Papua. Here, everybody speaks Indonesian. I attended a wedding, which was intercultural. The bride’s family was from Biak, Papua, and the groom’s family from Maluku, but both were born and grew up in Jayapura. The only language that I heard at the three-days long wedding was standard Indonesian, sometimes mixed with Papuan Malay, which is the native tongue for most people from Jayapura.

Here are the first lines of the popular song Jang Ganggu (jangan ganggu) in Papuan Malay. As you can see, Papuan Malay is not too different from Indonesian. Once you know that Indonesian /au/ is replaced by /o/ (mo and ko), that pi is pergi, tra is tidak, and that dong is a shortened form of dorang (which itself is a contraction of dia + orang; they), it is not too difficult to understand Papuan Malay.

Papuan Malay is closely related to the other dialects of Malay that are spoken in eastern Indonesia: Ternate Malay, Manado Malay, Ambon Malay, and Kupang Malay.

In May 2022 I also visited Sigapiton, a remote valley on the shore of Lake Toba, which is now promoted as a desa wisata (tourist village) even though tourists rarely visit the village. Everyone in Sigapiton speaks Toba Batak natively, but almost everyone is at least bilingual and also speaks Indonesian – sometimes with a heavy Batak accent, of course. Until four years ago, there was no road to Sigapiton, which could only be reached by boat. Now there is a road, but it is in terrible condition, and it takes about 30 minutes for the 2 km drive, and you need a powerful SUV for the 500m elevation between Lake Toba (900m above sea level) and the Kaldera Tourism Centre at 1400 m elevation.

Children typically learn Toba Batak first, but more and more parents raise their children using Indonesian only, or teach them both languages at the same time. Even young children are exposed to the Indonesian language through children programs on television, or by singing songs which are almost all in the Indonesian language. The following video was recorded in Sigapiton in May 2022. Most Toba Batak are Christians, and the song the children sing in the video is a Christian song.

It is a very simple song: Use your hands carefully/ Use your hands carefully/ because Father in Heaven looks down/ Use your hands carefully. And then it continues with Hati-hati gunakan kakimu, and Hati-hati gunakan mulutmu.

Difference between Indonesian and Malaysian Malay

Dr. Teo Kok Seong’s here speaks not in Indonesian, but in Malaysian Malay. Any native speaker of Indonesian will immediately realise that he does not speak Indonesian, but there is not a single word that a speaker of Indonesian will not understand.

There are tiny differences, first in pronunciation. Final -a is in Malay usually rendered as a Schwa [ǝ]. The spelling, however, is the same as in Indonesian. So he utters membina, bangga, and mencipta as if they were membine, bangge, and mencipte.

All other differences are idiomatic. Membina is a commonly used word in Indonesian, too, but in this context an Indonesian speaker may have chosen membangun instead of membina. The word legasi, derived from English legacy, is not commonly used in Indonesian where warisan would be the preferred choice. An Indonesian speaker might also have preferred segala over sekalian; menciptakan over mencipta; setia over taat, but these are only preferences.

There is really only one phrase and one word where an Indonesian speaker would definitely have used a different phrase or word: bahasa negara (national language) would have been bahasa nasional in Indonesian, and while Malay uses boleh for ‘may’ and ‘can’, Indonesian distinguishes between boleh and bisa, but, as evident from the following examples, there is often hardly any difference between boleh and bisa:

The following is a very educative video outlying some of the most striking differences between standard Malaysian and Indonesian Malay. To highlight the differences, they also compared colloquial Kuala Lumpur Malay with what they term Indonesian “casual speech”, which is in fact Betawi Malay or Omong Betawi, the dialect spoken in Jakarta. This is like comparing apples with oranges (which, to be fair, the video also admits). When we compare bahasa Indonesia with bahasa Malaysia we have to compare standard Indonesian with standard Malaysian. Also, some of the examples are iffy. The author compares Gue ngundang dia buat main bola ama kita (Jakarta Malay) with Aku ajak die nak main bola ngan kitorang. In fact, the verb ajak is not only perfectly known in Indonesia, but it would have been the better choice than ngundang. Ajak is ‘to invite someone to join into an activity’. Those who are familiar with local variants of Malay in Indonesia, will right away recognise the word kitorang (‘we’, from kita orang), which in Indonesia is more often rendered torang. The word gained prominence when Torang bisa! (We can do it!) was chosen as the motto of the 2021 Pekan Olahraga Nasional in Jayapura.

And finally, some words that are said be different, are in fact not always different. Let’s look at kakak, which in Indonesian means ‘older sibling’ whereas in Malay it is exclusively female. Yes, correct, except that almost everywhere in Sumatra kakak is exclusively female and abang male.

Can Indonesians and Malaysians communicate effortless?

Effective communication, even within the same language, requires a certain amount of effort. I have lived many years in Indonesia and in the United States. Once I visited Scotland to meet colleagues, and we were able to understand each other despite different accents. But when I drove around the country, I got list in the countryside. The people I asked for direction, understood me, but when they talked back to me, I did not understand a word!

As long as you use standard Indonesian, Malaysians will generally have no difficulties understanding you. But what when a Malaysian uses colloquial Malay in Indonesia? Indonesians will still get a bit, but far from all. However, if you use colloquial Indonesian in Malaysia, people generally still understand you. This is because Indonesia is the big neighbour and Malaysians are used to watch Indonesian movies, listen to Indonesian songs, etc.

More about Malay and Indonesian

Here are some articles about Indonesian and Malay:

1. What Is Indonesian? — The History of the Indonesian Language by George Quinn
2. Indonesian—An Austronesian Language by Uli Kozok
3. Indonesian Native Speakers — Myth and Reality by Uli Kozok
4. No-one Speaks Indonesia’s Language by Uli Kozok

Kartu Bolak-Balik

Make sure to study the following flip card until no more card is left!

Pekerjaan Rumah (PR)

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