100 Regional Languages Threatened With Extinction
Friday, 10 November, 2006 | 10:04 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: A hundred out of 600 regional languages in various Indonesian dialects are threatened with extinction. According to the Director of the Language Center at the Department of National Education Dendy Sugono , the dying regional languages are mostly in the central and eastern regions of Indonesia.

Of the nearly extinct languages, six languages of East Nusa Tenggara and Papua are confirmed as gone. “There is no regeneration of the language users,” said Dendy at the Language Center office yesterday (11/9) in Jakarta.

In addition to the lack of regeneration, said Dendy, the important factor that causes the extinction is that the users are not yet literate. So “there is no documentation for their languages. If those languages were documented, they might be traced,” he said.

One of the indications of the extinction of regional languages is that they are only practiced by 100 people. Due to cultural development, sooner or later the regional languages will not be used any more. One of many reasons of why the languages are dying is intermarriage between tribes.

Early December of this year, the government and the international language institution will hold a seminar, researching and mapping for saving the vanishing regional languages. “We will form a team for mapping languages,” said Dendy.

According to Dendy, within the next 100 years, there will be 50 percent reduction of 6,700 regional languages throughout the world. Nonetheless, with the decrease of regional languages, the emergence of new regional languages will be possible because of cultural development.

MUSTAFA MOSES