LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE AND STABLE BILINGUALISM AMONG SASAK-SUMBAWANS ETHNIC GROUP IN LOMBOK

Abstract

One of the minority languages in Lombok, which is now still used and highly maintained by its approximately 20,000 speakers throughout the island, is the Samawa or Sumbawa language (hencefort BSb). Although it has been existing right there for approximately three centuries, the Sumbawans are commonly Sumbawa–Sasak bilinguals or trilinguals due to the fact that they communicate in their mother tongue within their own village boundary but use either Sasak (henceforth BSs for Bahasa Sasak) or Bahasa Indonesia (BI) outside when talking with the Sasaks. On one hand, Sumbawans are proud that they could still use their indigenous Sumbawa-ethnic origin repertoire as employed just across Lombok island to the east, while they could also command Sasak as a wider means of communication among the people of Sasak in Lombok on the other. For the Sasak-sumbawans (the term referring to the ethnic naming) in Lombok, it seems that the language preservation is important for several reasons. The first and most dominant of all is that language is a symbol of its distinct intragroup identity as is clearly shown by the patterns of its language use. BSb is used as the main medium of communication in the home domain, neighborhood domain, religious domain as well as in intra-villager group relations. In the meantime, BSs is used only for communication with inter-villager group relations. For communication in public sphere such as school or government offices and in certain situations, however, BSs is preferable beside bahasa Indonesia. Therefore, these two related languages form a kind of diglossic or poliglossic situation, whereby BSb serves the L function, BSs the M (medium), and Bahasa Indonesia the H function. BI, however, is used only in a very formal situation. This research report will discuss in some details how Sumbawans bilinguals or trilinguals could maintain their indigenous language on one hand, and could use the dominant group language on the other. It is based mainly on my research carried out during 2004 -2005 and partly as an ‘observer’ being native of Sasak and live in a neighbouring Sasak-sumbawan village in East Lombok.