Betawi Language Loved And Loathed

Jakarta - It almost sounds like a joke. Nurdiana, an English teacher, runs into an old friend on the bus — they haven`t seen each other in ages.

Her friend asks, “How`s your mother doing?” Only she uses the Betawi: “Ape kabar, lu? Emak gimane, kencingnye lancar? [“How are you? How is your mom, does she pee well?”]

“It wasn`t strange to me that she asked that,” Nurdiana said. “I think if you pee well, that means you are healthy,” the 34-year-old said.

Nurdiana`s parents are from Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara, but they moved to Jakarta long before she was born. Growing up in a neighborhood largely inhabited by native Jakartans, or Betawi, Nurdiana is used to speaking Bahasa Indonesia with a smattering of the blunt, humor-laden Betawi dialect and a rapid-fire Betawi accent to boot.

“My mother and my late father do not speak like that, just me,” she said. “I think it`s because I used to hang out a lot with the Betawi kids in the neighborhood.”

Meanwhile, for true Betawi like Deni Faisal Anwar, it is not that easy to lose their accent, or the sometimes humorous turns of phrase they employ.

Which sometimes lands Deni in hot water at work, he said.

“I got reprimanded three times by the company for the way I spoke to my customers,” said Deni, who works for a foreign heavy-equipment company. “Once orally, and the other two times in writing.”

Deni said that his speech was considered raucous and rude by management.

“But that`s just the way we speak, we`re not being offensive,” Deni said. “My family lives in Lenteng Agung [South Jakarta], which is an area where the Betawi community has settled and are known for their outspoken speech, with its tendency to rise and fall sharply.”

Abdul Chaer, affectionately known as Bang (big brother) Chaer, compiled and published in June of this year a revision of the “Dictionary of the Jakarta Dialect,” which was first published in 1976.

The term Betawi itself derives etymologically from Batavia, a former name of Jakarta.

Bang Chaer, a professor at Universitas Negeri Jakarta, better known as UNJ, said that before Betawi became a dialect in its own right, it was a pidgin Malay language known as Melayu-Betawi (Betawi-Malay) that was used for communication between the mix of ethnic groups in the melting pot of Batavia, the colonial capital, which is today called Jakarta.

Bang Chaer said that Bahasa Indonesia, which is the language of instruction in Indonesian schools, was originally known by linguists as High Malay, because it uses more formal and less colloquial language.

Nana Mariamah identifies herself ethnically as Sundanese (people of West Java), but was born and grew up in Petojo, North Jakarta, an area heavily populated by Betawi people.

Her parents, she said, always spoke with a Betawi accent at home.

“But they switched to Sundanese when our relatives came,” she said.

Nana`s late husband had Sumatran, Sulawesi and Sundanese blood, but having been raised in Jakarta, he spoke a particular form of Betawi language with a thick accent, she said.

“We spoke the Betawi dialect with the accent to match at home, and our three children were influenced, so they did the same,” the 52-year-old said.

Betawi-Malay, known as Jakarta-Malay after the country gained independence from the Dutch in 1945, developed rapidly in line with other changes during the Sukarno era in the 1960s.

“For example, a group of native Jakartans, which consisted of thousands of people, used to live in the Senayan area [of Central Jakarta] but had to be relocated to another area when Sukarno instructed a stadium be built there [in 1958],” Bang Chaer said.

“This group of people spoke a different type of Jakarta-Malay to the one [spoken by people] in the new area. That contributed to the development of the language,” he said.

However, Bang Chaer said, there is a common misunderstanding about the language. “A lot of people think [speaking] Betawi is easy, [and that you can speak it] simply by changing the last `a` in any Indonesian word to an accented letter `e,` ” Bang Chaer said.

The truth is, the words in Jakarta-Malay are pronounced totally differently, he said.

“It depends on the group a [native] Jakartan belongs to, which is determined by the area in which they live,” the 68-year-old said.

There are a number of subdialects of Jakarta-Malay, Bang Chaer said, with each confined to a different Betawi neighborhood.

He said that you could easily identify where a Betawi person came from by listening to their speech. The Indonesian word “ rumah ” (house), for example, is both spelled and pronounced differently.

Jakartans who originally come from Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, will say “rume,” while in Mester-Kampung Melayu in East Jakarta the word is pronounced “rume” with an accented “e.” People from Kebayoran in South Jakarta pronounce it “rumah,” with strong “h” sound at the end, and those from Karet, also in South Jakarta, will drop the “h” and pronounce it “ruma.”

Siti Zuhuriyah, a Betawi woman, remembers during her school days more than 50 years ago, the differences between Betawi dialects often led to confusion.

“Although in the area where my family lives most words ended in an accented `e,` I could still follow how our teacher pronounced the Indonesian language words correctly, but my friend couldn`t,” Siti said.

“The sentence given was `Pak Ali naik sepeda` [Mr. Ali is riding the bicycle]. She insisted that it was said `Bang Ali naik sepedah,` with a strong `h` sound at the end. She didn`t get any marks for that,” the 60-year-old said of her friend, laughing.

One Jakarta television station`s weeknight newscast is read in a mix of Betawi dialects in an effort to give it a true Betawi flavor.

However, Bang Chaer said that the anchors lacked knowledge of the complexities of the subdialects they were speaking and merely changed the final “a” in almost all of the words to an accented “e,” meaning that the news could be understood by most Indonesians but that the language was being incorrectly used.

Although Betawi is widely spoken in Greater Jakarta, some Betawi speakers say they deal with certain situations in the “more polite” Bahasa Indonesia.

“When I talk to people I`ve just met, especially my customers, I use formal Indonesian language, and try not to use the Betawi accent,” Deni said.

“But once we get along well, I can`t help but swap back to my original dialect and accent again.”

Nurdiana also switches to what she calls “appropriate” Indonesian language and accent when speaking to most of her colleagues in her office at the language center of the University of Indonesia.

“It depends on to whom we are talking, the topic and the place,” she said.

Siti said that her three children also switch to the Indonesian language and accent in their places of work.

“It`s just not appropriate if you use the Betawi dialect and accent in places where there are educated people,” she said.

“One of my daughters-in-law is not Betawi, and she works in a bank,” Siti added. “I guess that`s why none of my grandchildren use the [Betawi] dialect or accent.”

“And they speak nicely.”

Abdul Chaer, or Bang Chaer, the man behind the “Dictionary of the Jakarta Dialect,” first published in 1976, said that a dictionary should ideally be updated on a regular basis as the language evolved.

The revised edition of the dictionary, which was issued in June of this year, consists of 600 words, including 200 new entries.

“There are more and more new words due to the cultural differences in Jakarta,” Bang Chaer said. “There are also words that derive from English.”

The word “ngetèm” (used by public transportation drivers), which means to stay for a long time at a bus stop in order to get more passengers, derives from the English word “time.” And “ngetrèn”, meaning becoming a trend, comes from the English word “trend.”

Bang Chaer said that the media also contributed to the emergence of new words. At a recent seminar, he said, the slang word “lebai” was part of the discussion.

“The word [lebai] is widely used these days. It derives from the word `lebih` [excessive] and it means to exaggerate,” he said.

A lexicology lab at the School of Humanities of the University of Indonesia in Depok, West Java, records new words, including in the Jakarta-Malay language, Bang Chaer said.

He said that the updated Betawi dictionary would come in handy for those who wished to speak like a native Jakartan.

“A book of Betawi idioms comes in the same package as the dictionary,” he added. “This is an effort to help preserve Jakarta`s cultural heritage.” Ade Mardiyati

Source: http://thejakartaglobe.com
Photo: http://www.beritajakarta.com

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