Abdi diajar Basa Sunda salami dua minggon wae

I’ve been meaning to write this post for weeks now; it’s a topic I find pretty endlessly fascinating. A month and a half ago I found out that my permanent site placement was in West Java, and immediately after the announcement I was shipped off for a visit. During site visit, one of the first things almost every person I met asked me is “Do you speak Sundanese?”

There are several ethnicities and local languages on the island of Java. The Javanese people, and naturally their language too, are the most numerous (someone once told me 40% of Indonesians speak Javanese), comprising a majority in East and Central Java; but the second-largest group, at least on Java, are the Sundanese, who dominate the West. That’s not to say everyone in West Java is Sundanese. Actually, in many areas, especially the closer you get to the central part of the island, it’s quite a mix of Sundanese and Javanese people/languages; but certainly where I am it’s almost entirely Sundanese. Just as living in Kediri I experienced the Javanese pride of their language and culture, so too at my site is the pride in the Sundanese language and culture. Sundanese is even taught in schools (just as Javanese is taught elsewhere).

In Peace Corps training, we were taught Indonesian for seven weeks and then we had a Language Proficiency Interview. If we passed at an Intermediate Low level or higher, we then moved on to studying a secondary language, dependent on what region we’d been placed in. Indonesian (also known as “Bahasa Indonesia,” the name for it in Indonesian) is the national language and the language of instruction in schools. In theory, all Indonesians have at least one language in common, and you can island-hop freely and use it everywhere.

The vast majority of Indonesians are fluent in Indonesian, but their relationship to the language varies wildly. For instance, I’ve met some older people who did not speak Indonesian, though I don’t know how much they may have understood. (When I talked to the elderly ladies in question, they just kept slapping my arm laughing, telling me over and over to speak Javanese. Sorry, I can’t oblige with what I don’t have.) I’m guessing in more remote areas, probably especially on other islands, there are more people who don’t speak Indonesian.

A lot, probably most, of the people I’ve known prefer to speak their local language over Indonesian. Some speak pure Javanese/Sundanese, while others speak a thick blend of Indonesian and the other. It can feel like Spanglish: rapid and unconscious code-switching. That’s what I experience most commonly at my site, especially among teachers at school.

That said, I’ve met some people who are fluent in one or more local languages but who prefer Indonesian, for whatever reasons. I’ve met people whose “native language” is Javanese/etc., but who are much more fluent, and therefore comfortable, in Indonesian. There’s a full range of attitudes and abilities. What I’ve seen so far most commonly, however, is Indonesian will get you most anywhere, but if you speak a local language, that gets you serious points with the people. As Nelson Mandela said, “If you speak to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you speak to a man in his language, that goes to his heart.” It’s such a profound statement, and resoundingly true.

That said, Indonesian is one of the easiest languages out there. And Sundanese…is one of the hardest. (I’d heard for years about how hard Javanese is, and then I finally got the chance to ask a man who was fluent in both Javanese and Sundanese which was more difficult. His answer? Sundanese.) Sundanese fascinates me, and I love the sound of it, and it makes people so delighted when I use it; but I have finite energy, and becoming fluent in Indonesian is still my priority. It’s the language I’ll be able to use not just on other islands, but also on the other two-thirds of the island I’m on, including when I hopefully go back to visit my host family in Kediri later on; it’s the language of government, the media—really, everything formalized, at least beyond the smallest local level. (On that smallest level, on the other hand… There are plenty of signs around my school, including the huge decorative “welcome” lettering by the entrance, which are either mostly or exclusively in Sundanese. Wilujeng sumping!)

After I passed the Peace Corps language test for Indonesian, I had two weeks of Sundanese class. The first week was brutal. We were learning Sundanese in the morning and then we had Model School, where I and a fellow trainee coteacher planned and taught classes, in the afternoon. Model School took a lot of out me, for whatever reason; and Sundanese was its own exhaustion. We learned Sundanese in Indonesian, which really was the right way to do it, so that we didn’t entirely lose our Indonesian in the switchover, and because a lot of the basic grammatical structures are similar; but this also had the effect of being really confusing and sort of repressing my Indonesian, as I had to struggle against using Indonesian in the classroom. It also effectively put on hold the deep studying I’d been doing in Indonesian to learn more complex vocabulary, bringing me back down to the beginning in a new language again: “My name is _____ , I am from ________.”

I was so tired with Model School that I didn’t have any energy to study Sundanese at night when I finally came home, and that would make the next day of Sundanese class that much harder. But I did my best to concentrate and try to pick up what I could. I knew it would absolutely come in handy. Even within a couple days I was able to remember things that people had said to me during site visit that I had thought were simply Indonesian words I didn’t know, but which I was able to now realize were actually Sundanese. (For example, everyone had kept asking me “kawit ti mana?”. That’s Sundanese for “where are you from?” And then there was the matter of that “welcome” sign out front at school…)

I also enjoyed secondary language class because Sundanese is just cool. I loved listening to my teacher speak it. We all agreed it had a kind of ancient quality about it that Indonesian doesn’t have. Some of the sounds are so different: ng, ny and eu are the hardest for me to pronounce, though there are also difficult near-silent ‘t’ sounds and others. “Ng” is a nasal sound that is kind of like the “ing” sound in English, except you make it without using your mouth whatsoever, and when it comes at the beginning of words it’s tough. “Ny” is also nasal, though slightly less difficult. “Eu” is just enjoyable to make a stab at; it’s super guttural in the back of your throat.

I don’t know enough about Sundanese grammar to comment on how difficult it may be, but one huge reason Sundanese is so tough is because it has three different levels. There are three different words for almost everything that Indonesian (and English) only uses one word for, dependent on whether you’re speaking to someone older than you whom you want to treat very politely, someone at the same rank as you, or someone younger (or whom you want to insult). So for instance, there are three words for “to eat,” dependent on the three levels. There are also different words for whether you are talking about yourself or someone else. I can say “abdi hoyong emam” to mean “I want to eat,” but then I say “anjeun bade tuang” for “you want to eat.” (Compare hoyong vs. bade for “want,” and emam vs. tuang for “eat”, dependent on if I’m referring to myself or to another person. Also, I’m using “tuang” because it’s very polite, but I have two other options I could use in reference to your eating, dependent on what I think of your status in relation to me.)

Sundanese and Javanese are different languages, but both have some words they share with Indonesian, and there are a few words they share between themselves (though they’re not remotely mutually intelligible). An interesting linguistic note is that in Indonesian, the words for the names of languages are the word “Bahasa” (“language”) followed by the name of the country or people that speak it. So “English” is “Bahasa Inggris” (“language of England”), while Indonesian is “Bahasa Indonesia.” In Sundanese and Javanese it works the same way, and the word for language is bahasa, with one exception in each: The name of the Sundanese language in Sundanese is “Basa Sunda” (basa, not bahasa); while Javanese, in Sundanese, would be called “Bahasa Jawa,” and so on. Similarly, if you say “Javanese” in Javanese, it’s “Basa Jawa,” while all other languages are Bahasa-whatever—Bahasa Sunda and so on. Like Sundanse, Javanese also has three levels (I’ve heard there’s a fourth, which was only used to speak to the Sultan with?), and even the numbers are different between levels. (My friend was also telling me there’s no pattern to the numbers up until 25, and even after that there are exceptions. Yikes!) Entertainingly, in Javanese the words get longer the more polite the level you use. I remember overhearing my host father in Kediri talking on the phone with his mother, using all very long, very-polite words.  

One of my favorite things we did in Sundanese class was our teacher taught us little songs. He taught us four in all, and I love them! I’ll include the lyrics so you can see the way the language looks (there is a Sundanese script, but we weren’t taught it—nowadays it’s just written with the Roman alphabet) and appreciate the sounds and rhyming structures:

   Oray-orayan luar-leor ka sawah

Tong ka sawah parena teu sedang beukah

Oray-orayan luar-leor ka leuwi

Tong ka leuwi, di leuwi loba nu mandi.

This song talks about snakes who can’t go into the rice paddies because it’s harvest time, and then can’t go into the river because people are bathing there. It’s a song to teach children caution, that they shouldn’t play in the rice fields or the river. There’s a game to accompany the song, similar to London Bridges or the “oranges and lemons say the bells of Saint Clemmons” British nursery song. Children put their hands on each others’ shoulders and twine like a snake around and under the arms of two children who have their hands clasped together to form a bridge; when the song ends, one child gets “caught” when the bridge is brought down on them.

   Cingciripit tulang bajin kacapit

Kacapit ku bulu pare

Bulu pare seuseukeutna.

Jol pak dalang mawa wayang

Jek jek nong!

This is less a song and more a kind of chant; you try to say it as fast as you can. The last line is sort of onomatopoeia for the sound of a gong being rung. Noooonnnggg!

3

Colenak beuleum peuyeum digulaan (x2)

Awas bom batok (x2)

Rebu-rebu randa montok

Leupangna dicentok-centok

Bisi nincak tai kotok.

This is a very fun sort of marching song. The lyrics are very funny. The beginning talks about delicious fermented cassava (also known as “tape” in Indonesian, I’ve had it a few times—it has a very soft texture, almost like durian, and a very strong flavor. I like it, but only in very small quantities). The ending describes a thousand beautiful widows sashaying in high heels, stepping carefully so they don’t step in chicken poop. Who knows what it means, but the imagery is great, the tune is addictive and the words are fun in the mouth. A couple nights ago I had colenak itself for the first time, and it was great! My host mother and I sang the song while she served it. Strips of fermented cassava—“peuyeum”—are grilled—“beuleum”—and then drizzled (or lathered) with dark brown liquid sugar, which makes them “digulaan” (“sugar’d”). The proper adjective to describe this combination is right there in its name: “enak!” (delicious).

4

Cingcang kaling manuk, cingkleung cineten

Plos ka kolong bapa satar buleneng.

This one is short but has an incredibly haunting melody. It was initially hard for our teacher to teach us the melody just because it sounded so unexpected and foreign, the way it changes keys or something (I don’t know music theory, I can’t explain why it was so surprising to our ears). It’s really beautiful. The lyrics say something about a kind of bird, a “manuk,” which perches underneath…a chair, maybe? Or am I making that up?

One of our last days learning Sundanese our teachers put on a very fun afternoon for us with the aim of having us appreciate Sundanese culture. They came dressed in traditional clothing, which was for the men, black jacket and trouser combos that were very simple (and comfortable-looking) with batik-patterned head bandanas all tied in different ways (there are something like twenty different ways to tie these, each with its own name); and for the women, skirts and shirts with transparent silk and very detailed beadwork. One of the teachers gave us a performance of a traditional Sundanese martial art that was later turned into performance, sort of like a dance; most striking was the bulging, intense, unblinking stare he held his eyes in the entire time—utterly inimitable.

Traditional Sundanese dancing reminds me of Javanese dancing (I don’t know enough to tell them apart), with ornate hand and shoulder movements. Our teachers also demonstrated the particular kind of nearly throat-singing that Sundanese rice farmers do in the fields; it was haunting and gave me chills. The afternoon ended with our teachers setting up a mock “pasar” (market) for us, with real fruits and fake money, so we could practice our Sundanese bargaining skills. It was such a fun day, and it really increased my interest in learning more about Sundanese culture and the language. Even if learning Indonesian is a higher priority for me, I really respect how important their language is to Sundanese people. It’s wonderful it’s a flourishing, living language, not to be overrun when Indonesian was installed as the national language. So much is lost when a culture loses their language.

Probably the most helpful thing our teacher made us do during our short study with him was to keep a daily, page-a-day diary in Sundanese, which he would then check and correct. That was the best way I learned new vocab (any word I didn’t know in Sundanese I would write in Indonesian, and then he would tell me what the actual Sundanese word was) and then practiced it, and got to practice writing sentences; and my progress in five days was huge. It’s a routine I should consider taking up in Indonesian, or even Sundanese, at least once I find a dictionary for the latter. (I’ve been trying to buy one, but have yet to find one in a bookstore.)

For our “final exam” in Sundanese class our teacher had us each monologue for three minutes, and then as a class we had to perform a short play he’d written. There were four of us in the class, but one girl was sick that day, and in our teacher’s play she had by far the most lines. I was given her role instead, and had to memorize over sixty lines in an hour or so. I ended up being glad that our teacher insisted that we memorize our lines, though (even though he could have easily had us just read the script), because I did feel like I got to know the words and expressions and constructions more intimately through memorization, and when I then spoke them they felt much more natural in my mouth. Our teacher studied Theater in college; I’m sure he knows full well the wealth of difference between reading versus memorizing your lines. After a little practice we performed the mini-play together and he recorded us on his phone. It was a really fun experience.

Peace Corps will reimburse us if we want to get language tutors at site, and you are allowed to study either Indonesian, a local language, or both. I haven’t entirely ruled out looking for a tutor for Sundanese (I absolutely want one for Indonesian). Even if I just travel to East Java I won’t be able to use Sundanese, but it’s still such a cool language, and I’ll never have this opportunity again. I’m certainly grateful for the two weeks of Sundanese I got under my belt. It’s so useful to be able to tell when people are switching between Indonesian and Sundanese. (And interesting: I love noting how one pair of conversants may speak mainly in Indonesian, with just an “atos” or “muhun” thrown in there, while another pair speaks pure Sundanese. I’ve ever heard people switch between the languages when reading a string of numbers: “genep empat,” that kind of thing.)

There’s also a couple things I know in Sundanese that I don’t know in Indonesian, like this extremely useful phrase: “abdi bade permios.” This is the polite thing you say when you are ready to leave someone’s house. Not only might you want to say it because you feel ready to leave, it’s also polite on your part to not overstay your visit, and keep it just to fifteen minutes or so, because your hosts are probably busy with other things to do as well. I have no idea if there is such an expression in Indonesian. Wilujeng tepang deuy!