Keminggris or Bahasa gado-gado

[jstar]

It is often used as a pejorative term for the Indonesian language with English influences. Especially a trend in South Jakarta. Obviously quite some languages in the world ‘suffer’ from this. I guess social media doesn’t help.

Interesting article with a perspective on this phenomenon.

Why Indonesia Never Really Became Dutch, but Is Now Becoming Anglicised - the low countries

IThere is something about the development of the Indonesian language that irritates journalist Joss Wibisono - it is being mixed with English.

www.the-low-countries.com

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[jstar]

Btw, using English for certain items in Indonesia could violate the Law No. 24 of 2009. In Article 36 paragraph (3) there’s an obligation to name buildings, brands, etc. that are Indonesian legal entities or owned by Indonesian citizens in Bahasa Indonesia‘s wording.

 

[Samoerai]

It is often used as a pejorative term for the Indonesian language with English influences. Especially a trend in South Jakarta. Obviously quite some languages in the world ‘suffer’ from this. I guess social media doesn’t help.

Interesting article with a perspective on this phenomenon.

Why Indonesia Never Really Became Dutch, but Is Now Becoming Anglicised - the low countries

IThere is something about the development of the Indonesian language that irritates journalist Joss Wibisono - it is being mixed with English.

www.the-low-countries.com

.

Interesting view in this article. Or views, like the VOC running the colony as a business.

"Moreover, Indonesia was not colonized by a state but by a company, the Dutch East India Company. That interview opened my eyes. Profit maximization was important for the company and costs in the colony had to be minimized. It was cheaper to teach employees Malay, the embryo of the Indonesian language, than to teach the population Dutch". ... "Dutch language policy failed to make Dutch an international language because of its lack of vision."

However I think he missed a point: Dutch people - in contrast to French en British - have no sense of nationalism. Totally not. So, imposing a language like Dutch on other people ... not really a characteristic trait of the Dutch people, my opinion.

Another point he missed. One of the reasons Indonesians adopt a lot of English words: Indonesians want to identify themselves with Western people and lifestyle. And want to show off to others that they can speak English and e.g. that they can afford a Western lifestyle, like eating and drinking in "Starbucks, Kitchenette, Monsieur Spoon, Denny's, Tous les Jours, Haagen-Dazs restaurants ...".

 

[snpark]

What's this got to do with vegetable salad and peanut sauce?

 

[Vulgarian]

He seems to be arguing for language purity, which I don't really understand. Languages change. Feel free to like some of the changes and dislike others, it has no effect on the process.

 

[jstar]

He seems to be arguing for language purity, which I don't really understand. Languages change. Feel free to like some of the changes and dislike others, it has no effect on the process.

See what you mean. And evolution of languages is inevitable (See Dutch vs. Flemish vs. Afrikaans, American vs. Australian vs. British English, ….).

Sometimes it makes you wonder though if we will not end up as in these cyberpunk stories and movies as Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell. Where the whole world seems to speak and understand (a mix of) three languages; English, Mandarin and Spanish.

Now in quite some languages there are purists (often writers and linguistics) who oppose any change or language reform. I remember there was a plan to simplify Dutch in a rather extreme way, the written version would be much closer to the spoken one. The argument against it was that it would become very difficult to read historical pieces.

Also, the link to the origin of a word would be lost. Example: The letter ‘h’ in “thuis” (which means (at) home) is silent and has no function in the spoken version. But the word is rooted in old Germanic where it was “zu hause” and it evolved via “te huize” and then “te huis” into “thuis”. So the opposition against simplifying it to “tuis” was very strong.

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[jstar]

Dutch people - in contrast to French en British - have no sense of nationalism. Totally not. So, imposing a language like Dutch on other people ... not really a characteristic trait of the Dutch people, my opinion.

Except in football and ice skating.

But obviously there is quite a difference between Indonesia and the countries in South America for instance. Religion and commerce played a big role; the Dutch merely wanted to make money, the Spanish were besides that also into political power and proselytizing and converting the local population.