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THE
INDONESIAN
LANGUAGE
to Aceh, in northern Sumatra. However, in West Papua, another area with a strong secessionist movement, the need for unity among speakers of several hundred languages maintains the position of Indonesia.
T H E P O S I T I O N O F J AVA N E S E As the largest regional language in Indonesia, the position of Javanese is worth separate consideration. While some of the challenges it faces apply to other languages as well, there are circumstances unique to Javanese. The Javanese language is in no danger of disappearing, having by far the largest number of speakers of any regional language and a strong and ancient cultural tradition. Between the 1980 and 1990 censuses, the number of Javanese speakers rose by almost nine million. Nevertheless, despite the increase in the number of speakers, there was a decline by 2.5 per cent between the two censuses of the overall Indonesian population speaking Javanese as their first language. The great majority of Javanese can also speak Indonesian and this bilingualism is the condition that allows for a shift from maintenance of Javanese to monolingualism in Indonesian. This has certainly occurred, for instance, in a great many Javanese families that have moved to Jakarta and, as mentioned, is also occurring in cities within Javanese-speaking Central and East Java. As early as 1960, a sociologist commented on the shift towards Indonesian among Javanese, writing, ‘although the use of Indonesian for everyday conversation is still mostly confined to the more sophisticated urbanites, and its use suggests something of an air of public speaking for most Javanese, it is rapidly becoming more and more an integral part of their daily cultural life and will become even more so as the present generation of school children grows to adulthood’.31 One study of language use among Javanese lists a number of reasons why Javanese might use Indonesian instead of Javanese in certain circumstances.32 Some of the reasons for shift apply to other languages, while some are peculiar to Javanese. Indonesian is typically used for prestigious activities, and in using Indonesian people acquire prestige, or at least see themselves as doing so. For example, Indonesian is associated with education and modernity. Therefore fluency in Indonesian gives one the aura of being educated and modern. Indonesian is also the language of Jakarta, where people viewed as powerful, wealthy and attractive reside. Speaking like such people helps one acquire some of their prestige. In the increasing