My name is Nor Ismah, and you can call me Isma. I am a student at The
University of Hawaii at Manoa in Asian Studies department focusing on
Southeast Asia Studies. I was born in Pekalongan, a district in Central
Java, Indonesia that is also known as Batik city. But now I live in
Yogyakarta, a province in Indonesia where you can find Borobudur temple
and Merapi mountain. Javanese is my mother language and I use it in my
daily life with my family and other people in my home town. Besides, I
speak Bahasa Indonesia as well for official and commercial purposes.
Both in Pekalongan and Yogyakarta I speak Javanese but there is some
differences in some words and dialect.
I am involved in documentation project to document not only my
language, but by doing it I am also helping to converse about my
culture. For example, there are some traditional
games using Javanese song played by children. When I was small, I used
to play traditional games with my friends, but now I have forgotten the
games in detail, even our current generation do not play it anymore.
So, I also want to keep record of those traditional games to preserve
them as our cultural possessions.
About
my language
Javanese is a language spoken by people in the central and eastern
parts of the island of Java, in Indonesia. It belongs to the
Austronesian
(Malayo-Polynesian) language family. More than 75,500,000 of people are
natives user of Javanese, and in Indonesia it has several regional
dialects that have differences in many words and dialect. For example,
Javanese in Tegal, a district in Central Java is different from
Javanese in Pekalongan, even though both of them are located in the
same province. Like for ‘hungry’, in Javasene in
Tegal is ‘kencot’, while in Javanese in Pekalongan
it is ‘ngelih’.
In
Javanese, there are three levels of languages that we use for
conversation. There are Ngoko, Kromo Madya, and Kromo Inggil. According
to Javanese culture, the way of speaking to
someone younger is different than to someone older. We use Ngoko to
talk to our friend and whoever who are younger than us. To talk to
somebody whom we respect or to stangers we use Kromo Madya. And, we use
Kromo Inggil to talk to our parent and some people in important
positions. Kromo Inggil is used as well for some ceremonies in formal
situations like wedding parties.
(from Zazzle)
