MAINTAINING VERNACULARS TO PROMOTE PEACE AND TOLERANCE IN MULTILINGUAL COMMUNITY IN INDONESIA

Abstract

Indonesia is a large nation in terms of ethnics, cultures, and vernaculars. Indonesian constitution guarantees that the cultures, vernaculars will be taken care of by the government. This is in line with the UNESCO recommendation, to preserve vernaculars as the world cultural heritage. The most important thing is that preserving vernaculars will promote peace and solidarity in multilingual community. In reality, speakers of many vernaculars in Indonesia are getting less and less. Sneddon states that this is caused by lingua franca and language shift (2003: 203). Areas of higher linguistic diversity like Indonesia always need means of interethnic communication, i.e. lingua franca. People shift to lingua franca may cause vernacular speakers decline rapidly, which may cause language decay. The teaching of vernaculars only at the passive level, not emphasizing writing and reading will fasten the language decay.Vernaculars will be preserved if they are respected, used, and inherited to the following generation. Friberg (2011) states that languages that can be maintained are the ones written and can be read. We should not only use our national language, but also our vernaculars in order to maintain our regional languages. And as people of multilingual community, it is better if we are multilingual. It should be borne in mind that vernaculars reflect local cultures, local values, local identity. The exposure to regional languages will make people familiar with the languages. And as a result, the people will be familiar with their own cultural values and other people’s cultural values. Komorowska (2010) claims that understanding others’ languages will promote understanding and communication between citizens. And this will lead to peace process, to deeper knowledge of other communities and their cultures, and in consequence to promote tolerance.