Javanese

A Javanese performance of the Hindu epic Rāmāyaņa— Indian culture reached Java with the introduc- tion of Hinduism and Buddhism and created a rich blend with indigenous culture that lasted through Malay influx, Islamicization, and Dutch colonial rule, and it endures even in today’s popular art.

Language information: After Indonesian (the national lingua franca of Indonesia), Javanese is the most widespread and influential language of Indonesia and has the largest number of native speakers (currently over 75 million). It is primarily used on the Indonesian island of Java. Its original domain was the eastern half of the island, the western part having been that of Sundanese. However, Javanese spread westward and eventually came to dominate in neighboring areas that used to be Sundanese speaking, also in an enclave in the Banten area, west of the national capital Jakarta.
     There are numerous Javanese-speaking communities off the island as well, namely in most of the country’s larger cities, on the island regions of Sulawesi, Maluku, Kalimantan and Sumatra, in Western New Guinea (Irian Jaya), in Singapore, in Malaysia (especially in Sabah) and in the Netherlands. Aside from that there are specific overseas dialects of Javanese: Caribbean Javanese of Suriname and French Guiana (also used in the Netherlands), and New Caledonian Javanese spoken in Noumea. Javanese is likely to have been used extensively in the early days of Dutch rule in Southern Africa when large numbers of “Malay” slaves were transported to the Cape of Good Hope. However, the “Cape Malay” descendents have lost their ancestral languages for Afrikaans and English.

     Though confined to a relatively small geographical area, Javanese has numerous dialects. The most distinctive of these tend to be in formerly Sundanese-speaking areas, such as the dialect of Cirebon and the Banten dialect of the Javanese enclave around Serang, west of Jakarta. Even more distinctive are the Javanese dialects used in other parts of the world.
     Javanese language and culture have an extraordinarily complex, multi-layered history in which waves of Indian, Middle Eastern, Malay and Western influences enriched a strong indigenous base, and with this came Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. A hallmark of cultural and linguistic complexity is the consideration of archaic, social hierarchies that are likely to go back to the island’s Hinduist era. For instance, in the Javanese language, much as in Balinese and Japanese, stylistic and lexical choices are determined by the relative social positions of the speaker and the listener, and this is further complicated by the use of special orthographic devices when using the traditonal Javanese script. The main levels of speech are Ngoko (informal), Madya (intermediary, polite) and Krama (formal, deferential), and the Krama level is subdivided into “neutral” and “humble.” In addition, honorific and humilific “meta-style” words are used. For example, “I want to eat” may be expressed as follows:
     
          · Ngoko: Aku arep mangan.
          · Madya: Kula ajeng nedha.
          · Krama:
                    · (Neutral) Kula badhé nedha.
                    · (Humble) Dalem badhé nedha.     

     Due to the pivotal roles of Java in Indonesia, the development of the Malay-based Indonesian national language has been influenced by Javanese. Javanese culture is still going strong, both traditional as well as modern, being parellel and often overlapping with evolving Indonesian national culture. Once reserved for the royal courts, ancient music, dance and visual arts are now more accessible and are greatly revered, as are more popular art forms, such as various types of Javanese-style puppet plays, drawing mostly from the ancient Hindu epic Rāmāyaņa. Greatly revered, too, are the relatively few Javanese people that are still able to read and write the old Javanese script known as Carakan (spelled Tjarakan under Dutch rule) or Aksara Jawa (spelled Aksara Djawa under Dutch rule). Like the script for Balinese, with which it is closely related, it was derived from the Old Kawi script and ultimately from the South Indian Pallava (Vatteluttu) script that in turn developed from the Old Indian Brahmi script. The Javanese script has been masterfully adapted to indigenous esthetics and is regarded as visually very pleasing by most people anywhere. However, although the basic Indic system has not been compromised, and Indic loanwords are more or less spelled as in Sanskrit, the novice learner tends to find it difficult to distinguish the letters from each other, since their ornamental power is to the detriment of their distinctiveness. Javanese has been written with the Arabic-based Pegon script as well, although rarely. These days it is mostly written with a Latin-based orthography with a somewhat inconsistently followed orthography, oftentimes ignoring certain phonemic distinctions. This was preceded by a Dutch-based colonial orthography. Some phonemic distinctions are not represented in the latest version of the Roman-script-based orthography, most specifically distinction between closed and open vowels (e.g. a now representing à, á and å, and e now representing e, è, é and ĕ). The letter combinations th and dh represent retroflex equivalents of t and d respectively, rare sounds in the Malay region, possibly due to Indic influence.
     Unlike neighboring and most other Austronesian languages, Javanese has syllable-initial consonant clusters, probably as a result of contraction following vowel reduction, also as a result of adopting Indic words; e.g., mlenguk ‘obvious’, plus ‘identical’, prabot ‘gear’, mramong ‘to glow’, ngrayud ‘heavy with fruit’, clab-club ‘hasty’, ‘thoughtlessly’, nylingkring ‘skinny’, srenteg ‘shapely’, ‘curvy’, trèktrèkan ‘to scream shrilly’.
     Javanese literature has a long and rich history that can be traced back to the 9th century C.E. (Sukabumi inscription), though 5th-century Sanskrit inscriptions (e.g., the Tarumanegara of 450 C.E.) seem to indicate that Javanese wrote before then. Important Old Javanese works (9th–13th century) include the Kakawin Ramayana (a rendition of the Vishnuic epic Rāmāyaņa) and the Buddhist work Sang Hyang Kamahayanikan, most of them following the kakawin poetic style. Many Middle Javanese works (13th–16th century) reflect the often tumultuous transitions that led from Hinduism and Buddhism to Islam. Many New Javanese works (16th–20th century) reflect the gradual absorption of Islamic thinking, and some of them are written with the Arabic-based Jawi script. Beginning with the 20th century, especially with the end of colonial rule, a type of literature emerged that some regard as being Modern Javanese. However, Modern Javanese writing tends to be relegated to traditional themes and tends to be more or less Indonesianized (Malay-influenced), while Indonesian writing is used in all spheres and reaches all Indonesians, irrespective of their native languages.
      Like most languages of Indonesia, Sundanese adopted a good number of words from Dutch under Dutch colonial rule. Some of these words entered Sundanese directly, most of them via Indonesian or Javanese.

Genealogy: Austronesian > Malayo-Polynesian > Western > Sundic

Historical Lowlands language contacts: Dutch

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Author: Reinhard F. Hahn