Javanese
Javanese is the language of the largest ethnic group of Indonesia with around 75 million speakers. It is mainly spoken in Central and East Java, as well as in northern coastal areas. Outside Java, many Javanese speakers are found in transmigration areas in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi. In Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana, in South America) there is a Javanese immigrant community of some 60,000 descendants of indentured workers.
Javanese belongs to the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) family. There is considerable dialectal variation, but the language of Central Java, more specifically the principalities of Surakarta and Yogyakarta, is commonly regarded as standard. A feature that Javanese shares with related languages such as Sundanese, Madurese, and Balinese is the possession of different speech levels or sets of vocabulary, the ngoko-krama phenomenon. The basic, informal level is ngoko, while krama—synonymous with politeness— is used when speaking to a social superior or a stranger. Three types of script are used for writing modern Javanese: Javanese, Perso-Arabic, and Roman script. Javanese script has evolved over more than 1,200 years and derives from an Indian script. Since World War II, however, Javanese script has rapidly given way to Roman script, which is currently the only script mastered by the majority of Javanese. Perso-Arabic script, with or without vowel diacritics, is associated with Islamic texts.
The charter of Sukabumi, dated 25 March 804 CE, marks the beginning of the Old Javanese language. The terms Old Javanese, Middle Javanese, and Modern Javanese do not reflect a neat historical succession. Old Javanese is used for all Javanese texts lacking Arabic loans or Muslim influence, whereas Middle Javanese denotes the language of Balinese kidung literature. In Bali, OldJavanese remains a living tradition to the present day. The earliest documents in Modern Javanese are two manuscripts of Islamic teachings current on the north coast of Java in the sixteenth century. In the early twentieth century Indonesian nationalists decided that Malay was more suitable than Javanese for a national language, and declared it so under the name of Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) in 1928. A process of mutual interpenetration of the two languages is still in progress.
Javanese dancers in traditional costume in Bandung, West Java. (LINDSAY HEBBERD/CORBIS)Further Reading
Arps, Bernard. (1996) "Javanese Language, Literature and Theatre." In Southeast Asian Languages and Literatures. A Bibliographical Guide to Burmese, Cambodian, Indonesian, Javanese, Malay, Minangkabau, Thai, and Vietnamese, edited by E. Ulrich Kratz. London and New York: Tauris, 112–164.
Robson, Stuart. (1992) Javanese Grammar for Students. Clayton, Australia: Monash University.
Uhlenbeck, E. M. (1964) A Critical Survey of Studies on the Languages of Java and Madura. The Hague, Netherlands: Nijhoff.
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