Aula 5

Indonesia is the second country with the most languages in the world. With 17.000 islands and 1.340 ethnic groups, Indonesia is the home of approximately 718 languages: 14 languages are extinct; 266 languages are vulnerable; 75 languages are dying. The language policy on indigenous languages had been initiated since the early of Indonesia's history as a free country in 1945. However, the policy was not strong enough because the emphasis has been directed to the national language, as the symbolic tool for unity in diversity. After the New Era regime, demand for decentralization grew stronger. Policies on indigenous languages have been delegated to local (provincial) governments. The question is how effective the decentralized policies are for the efforts to preserve indigenous languages. In this talk, Javanese will be the focused example to find out how far a local government participates in language preservation. Javanese can be a good example because of its status as one of the main indigenous languages in Java island. Javanese is the largest of the Austronesian languages in Indonesia with around 68,200,000 people speaking the language as their mother tongue (Ethnologue 2020). Despite a large number of speakers, Javanese scholars believe that this language is losing speakers. Local governments’ policies and their effectiveness on Javanese preservation depend on the characteristics of each province. I argue in this talk that decentralized policies alone are not enough since local governments may not have the same perspective in Javanese preservation. In addition, Javanese preservation also needs to consider (sub)dialects that have not been sufficiently touched by any language policy.