MAINTAINING VERNACULARS TO PROMOTE PEACE AND TOLERANCEIN 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. Thiss in line with the UNESCO recommendation, to preserve vernaculars as the world culturalheritage. The most important thing is that preserving vernaculars will promote peace andsolidarity in multilingual community. In reality, speakers of many vernaculars in Indonesia aregetting 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 interethniccommunication, i.e. lingua franca. People shift to lingua franca may cause vernacular speakersdecline rapidly, which may cause language decay. The teaching of vernaculars only at the passiveevel, not emphasizing writing and reading will fasten the language decay.Vernaculars will bepreserved if they are respected, used, and inherited to the following generation. Friberg (2011)ates that languages that can be maintained are the ones written and can be read. We should notonly use our national language, but also our vernaculars in order to maintain our regionalanguages. And as people of multilingual community, it is better if we are multilingual. It should beborne in mind that vernaculars reflect local cultures, local values, local identity. The exposure toregional languages will make people familiar with the languages. And as a result, the people willbe familiar with their own cultural values and other people‘s cultural values. Komorowska (2010)aims that understanding others‘ languages will promote understanding and communicationbetween citizens. And this will lead to peace process, to deeper knowledge of other communitiesand their cultures, and in consequence to promote tolerance.