Language Shows Nationality
Language is just like a living thing. It changed and developed from time to time. Language experienced displacement in many ways. It could be changed dramatically or gradually step by step, according to the factors that influenced it. Language is just like social phenomena that also experiencing evolution.
The function of the language is to convey information. People could possibly interact each other with the language they understood. The common language that people use is oral or spoken language. In fact there are many other ways for people to communicate, body language for instance, is also commonly used to convey the intention. This kind of language is easier to be interpretated and commonly used in case of stuck or not successfully finding a right word to describe the intention. We used to do it also, when we mate somebody with different culture or dialect that is not using the same language as us. We use gesture or any other specific act to show certain meaning. But we must be carefull of it, since different culture will catch different meaning of body language.
This matter is also happened In Indonesia. Here we could find thousands or even billion of dialect. Some of them share vocabulary in common, but the rest is totally different. For example, in Java Island that is geographically divided into three big part of islands, that is West Java (commonly named Sunda), Central Java and East Java (both commonly named simply Jawa). This distinction between Sunda and Jawa indicated the very different language they used. Most vocabularies of those is extremely different only some share in common. For example the word “dahar” Javaneese and Sundaneese share the same meaning of it, that is to eat. But even thought the word and the meaning is the same, it different in placing that word in used in term of politeness. Sundaneese use the word dahar when they talked among friend and not for elderly people, conversely Javaneese regarded this word as a polite word and using it for elderly people. Other example is the word “atos”. In Sundaneese this word means finish, but in this same word’s form javanese has absolutely different meaning. For Javaneese this word mean “hard”.
People of Java have high culture in the sense of self behaving in the society. Being polite is indigenous culture of Javanese. We can see it untill now, Javanese have steps in its language. Shortly they use different word to convey the same meaning to different classes (age, social status) of people in the daily activities. There are three levels :ngoko, kromo and kromo hinggil. Ngoko is usually used among friend. Kromo can be use among friend to show respect or to somebody we just know, but it is not commonly happened. it is regarded politer than ngoko. The highest ladder is Kromo hinggil which is totally used for older people or those who have high social status.
Learning about language means learning about culture, attitude or behaviour and even about human civilization. By listening what people saying we could tell wherever they come from with general behavior or set of values of a person at once. That’s remind me of a proverb in Indonesia that in English means “Language shows the Nationality”. In fact we can find and get more things from language.[ ]
