In 2016, I had a chance to go to Japan and challenge myself to meet new people, culture, and lifestyle. At the beginning, I thought that to be acceptable in the international community, I have to understand English. As an Indonesian student, I have been familiarized with learning English for years since elementary school. I should have known the basics of English, but at that time I was hardly doubt myself to speak it. Learning the language for years doesn’t guarantee you will speak it.
So, I took my first step to prepare myself for speaking. I learn the way people communicate in English especially for daily conversation. I am entering Japan with the enthusiasm of speaking an international language. Yet, I was wrong because shortly after my departure, everything was constantly changed into Japanese language. They don’t speak English regularly as the international language should. They speak Japanese language. In the public area, it is easy to find such information written in bilingual or trilingual context, but in daily conversation, they rather use Japanese language. Children in Japanese learn English as well since elementary school but the awareness of loving their community language is undeniable. Their speaking style shows their love for their country and community.
Related to it, I am constantly mesmerized by how they keep the community to continue loving their country through simple ways, speaking the language. Born and raised in Indonesia should’ve made me proud of having Bahasa Indonesia as my first language. Unfortunately, most of the time, I am more interested in learning foreign languages, especially English.
How many times during the school program you had another class learning English in course just to prepare yourself for an examination?
The pressure to learn English is higher than our awareness of speaking Bahasa Indonesia. In fact, sometimes Bahasa Indonesia feels so far and difficult to understand. The material we learn and the language we use daily slightly has different styles, which are differentiated as formal and informal, and also about politeness in conversation.
Not only in conversation, but in written communication also we barely enjoy writing in Bahasa Indonesia. The reason is because the grammar of Bahasa Indonesia is not familiar to us. I found mistakes in writing in Bahasa Indonesia that I made over and over again until it feels right that way. One of them is how to write “terima kasih”. Most people continually write “terimakasih” without any hesitation to know the right way to write it. This inaccurately written is indicating the language errors. Another commonly found language errors are ignorance and indifference.
1.Incapacity
Bahasa Indonesia is our first language. We use it daily at home, at school, in the discussion room, and also in the chatting room on social media. We learn it officially at school, yet there is grammar or structure that we still do not know and understand. The ignorance to learn and dig out more is the very basic cause of errors of using the language.
Another example of ignorance is the development of vocabulary in Bahasa Indonesia itself. There are a lot of new words absorbed from foreign language and local languages to enrich our vocabulary. For example, selfie in Bahasa Indonesia is “swafoto”.
To solve this incapacity problem, we have to develop the desire to learn and use it. The awareness always starts from yourself. When we start to learn and start to use it, people will notice and can follow us too.
2. Inaccuracy
Language can be done in verbal and non-verbal communication. In verbal communication, we speak the language and use it for conversation. For non-verbal communication, we may write it directly to the paper.
In written form, people can see the result of our writing text. The inaccuracy errors in language shows that we are not detailed. To solve this problem, we need to do editing for the content and then proofreading to sharpen it.
3. Ignorance
The third or final cause is ignorance. This is the most difficult to solve. Indonesian writers are very careful when writing in English, but do not care about language errors when writing in Indonesian. It’s like paying more attention to other people’s partners than your own.
Ignorance can actually be the root cause of language errors. In many local events, the speaker is proudly using English rather than Indonesian while speaking in front of Indonesian people, to explain something related to Indonesia.
How do we care about Indonesian? If we want to keep something heartedly, we will care for it from joy or appreciation. When we like and appreciate someone, for example, we will care about that person. Likewise with language. Concern for Bahasa Indonesia will grow when we realize the beauty of our language and don’t feel it is awkward.
The spirit of taking care of each other should be started by the awareness of keeping each other, including language. It is very cool to serve a show on an international level, but if we lost our identity towards the process, are we still proud of what we built so far? When we love someone and we don’t put him as the priority, is it still called love?
Same as language, we may adapt and adjust with any kind of situation in local, national, and international. Yet to make Bahasa Indonesia as the priority language at least in daily conversation with friends and relatives is the challenge to spread the awareness.
Source and inspiration from Narabahasa