Bahasa Indonesia steals the show

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 10/29/2007 4:39 PM

Veeramalla Anjaiah, The Jakarta Post, Naples, Italy

Is Bahasa Indonesia really an international language? It certainly looked like one at the recently concluded 5th EuroSEAS Conference in Naples in Italy.

EuroSEAS, the European Association for South-East Asian Studies, is a professional and non-profit organization of European scholars engaged in the study of Southeast Asian matters.

""It (the EuroSEAS conference) looked like an international conference of Indonesian-speaking scholars,"" Antonia Soriente, a linguist from Italy who has done extensive study on Indonesian languages, told The Jakarta Post recently.

A majority of the 450 participants, mostly from European countries, were experts on Indonesia and most speak fluent Bahasa Indonesia.

Another participant from Indonesia was also surprised.

""I was stunned. I have never seen so many foreigners speaking Bahasa Indonesia in a foreign country,"" Eddy Widjanarko, chairman of the Indonesian Footwear Association, told the Post in Napoli.

Eddy was in Naples to attend the Workshop on Economic Cooperation with Southeast Asia, which was organized as side event of the EuroSeas Conference.

There are more than 200 people who speak Bahasa Indonesia in Naples.

""In all of Italy, Naples is the only city that offers a Bahasa Indonesia language program,"" said Prof. Faizah Soenoto, an Indonesian who teaches Bahasa Indonesia at the University of Naples ""L'Orientale"", the venue of the conference.

Currently, there are 70 students, including two PhD students, studying Bahasa Indonesia at L'Orientale university.

A participant from Russia also expressed astonishment about the widespread use of Bahasa Indonesia at the conference.

""I never imagined that so many people from various countries could speak fluent Indonesian. It's totally surprise for me,"" Anton O. Zakharov, a research scholar from the Russian Academy of Sciences, said.

Zakharov said he was learning Bahasa Indonesia for his research on the Sri Wijaya empire.

An Indonesian delegate told her fellow countrymen to be careful about what they said.

""Don't make any comments (negative or sarcastic) in Bahasa Indonesia. Be careful, most of the people here understand the Indonesian language,"" Putri Suryandari, a lecturer at Budi Luhur University in Jakarta, told her fellow Indonesian delegates.

Though at present there are 500 foreign students learning Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesia, the general interest in Bahasa Indonesia in North America, Europe and Australia has declined rapidly in recent years.

Indonesians adopted Bahasa Melayu or Malay, a language spoken in Riau, Sumatra, in 1928 as their national language under the new name of Bahasa Indonesia. The adoption was part of the famous Youth Pledge, under which Indonesian youth stated that there would be one homeland (Indonesia), one nation and one language (Bahasa Indonesia).

Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of Indonesia, is now also spoken by a majority of people in Timor Leste. The Malay language is widely spoken in Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore and some parts of Thailand and the Philippines.

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