Javanese
Sugeng rawuh"welcome"
Sugeng rawuh"welcome"
Introduction
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Javanese is one of the classical languages of the world, with a literary tradition of over a thousand years. The oldest inscription in Javanese dates back to 804 AD. The Javanese literary tradition that emerged in the 8th-9th centuries continues in the present.
Javanese is the spoken language of over 75 million people in the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, in Indonesia (Ethnologue). It is also spoken in Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Although it not an official language of Indonesia, Javanese has by far the largest number of speakers of all Austronesian languages. It is spoken or understood by approximately 80 million people in Indonesia. At least 45% of Indonesia's population are of Javanese descent or live in areas where Javanese is the dominant language. As a result, Javanese has a significant influence on Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of Indonesia. It is recognized as a regional language in three provinces of Java with the largest concentrations of speakers of Javanese. Javanese is taught in schools and is also used in the mass media. There are three main dialects of Javanese that are more or less mutually intelligible. |
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Javanese Gamelan Music Gamelan is the main element of traditional Indonesian music. Each gamelan is slightly different from the other, however, they all have the same organization, based on different instrumental groups with specific orchestral functions. The instruments in a gamelan are composed of sets of tuned bronze gongs, gong-chimes, metallophones, drums, one or more flute, bowed and plucked string instruments, and sometimes singers. The most popular gamelan can be found in Java and Bali. Click here to listen to Javanese gamelan.
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Wayang kulit (Indonesian shadow puppet show) Wayang is a Javanese word meaning "shadow" or "ghost." It is a theatrical performance of shadow images projected before a backlit screen that uses two-dimensional puppets chiseled by hand out of buffalo or goat parchment with limbs that swivel. Wayang kulit puppets are stylized exaggerations of human shapes. Most of the stories are Indian epics transformed by generations of Javanese storytellers. Click here to learn more about wayang kulit. |
Structure
Sound System |
Sound system An interesting feature of Javanese are retroflex consonants. Retroflex consonants are articulated with the tip of the tongue curled up and back so the bottom of the tip touches the roof of the mouth. Try pronouncing /t/ and /d/ in this way.
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Javanese is an agglutinative language in which grammatical relations are expressed by the addition of prefixes and suffixes to roots. Syntax Registers (styles) There are three registers in Javanese:
In addition, Javanese uses humilifics and honorifics to indicate sensitivity to status as defined by age, social position, and other factors.
The use of these different styles is complicated and requires knowledge of the Javanese culture. These different styles are not mastered by the majority of Javanese. Most people only master the first style (ngoko) and a rudimentary form of the second style (madya). Persons who have mastery of all styles are held in high esteem.
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Most Javanese vocabulary is Austronesian in origin. It is enriched by numerous borrowings from other languages. One of the earliest sources of borrowing was Sanskrit. It is estimated that up to 25% of the vocabulary in Old Javanese literature was derived from Sanskrit. Today, many Sanskrit words are still in use, particularly in formal speech and writing. Javanese has also borrowed words from Arabic, Dutch, and Malay. Most Arabic loanwords have to do with Islam.
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Writing |
The Javanese alphabet (Charakan or Caracan script) is a descendant of the Kavi script whose oldest written documents date back to the 8th century AD. The earliest known writing in Javanese was in the Kawi script which was based on the Indian Brahmi script. The name Kawi in Javanese means "language of the poets" and is an indication that it was a literary language, influenced by Sanskrit. The Kawi alphabet became the basis of the current Javanese orthography. Its use was prohibited under the Japanese occupation of Indonesia during World War II (1942-1945). Today, it is mostly used by religious scholars who are held in high esteem for their ability to read and write it. Today, Javanese is written with the Latin alphabet, introduced by the Dutch in the 19th century. It has gradually replaced Javanese. The Javanese alphabet is a syllable-based writing system in which each consonant has an inherent vowel /a/. This vowel can be suppressed or changed to a different vowel through the use of diacritics that can appear above, below, in front of, or after the consonant. Each consonant two forms:
Click here to see the two forms of Javanese consonants. Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Javanese. Can you find any words that look familiar to you?
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Resources
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How difficult is it to learn Javanese? There is no established difficulty rating for Javanese. One could surmise, however, that it is a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English |
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