This is a comment on your article on the life of the Tugu people, who are of Portuguese descents. My comment may be a bit late as the article was published on Nov. 16, 2008, but it is not too late to comment on the issue.

While it is nice that people in Indonesia like the Tugu can appreciate their Portuguese heritage, people should not fall into the trap of looking backwards.

Although Indonesia did not have diplomatic relations with Portugal for many years because of the East Timor issue, it always had diplomatic relations with Brazil, the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world.

It is thanks to Brazil that Portuguese is the third most widely spoken Western language after English and Spanish, with more people in the world speaking it than French, German and Italian combined. Sadly, though understandably, what little people in Indonesia hear about the Portuguese language is negative, because of the problems with Timor Leste's language policy.

However, that should not deter anyone in Indonesia from learning Portuguese, any more than the lack of interest among most Vietnamese in learning French, and the lack of interest among most Filipinos in learning Spanish deters anyone in Indonesia from learning those languages.

If the Gramedia book publishing company can find a market for a Swedish-Indonesian dictionary, why not a Portuguese-Indonesian one? It would be a reminder of how many Portuguese loanwords are commonly used in Indonesian!

Ken Westmoreland

Jakarta

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