LANGUAGE VITALITY: A CASE ON SUNDANESE LANGUAGE AS A SURVIVING INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE

Abstract

Most Indonesians speak their own mother tongue as well as the national language which they learned at school. Sundanese language (basa Sunda) is one of the ethnic languages of Indonesia, spoken by the Sundanese people (urang Sunda), the second biggest ethnic group in Indonesia after the Javanese. It is the mother tongue of the majority of inhabitants of the Western part of Java. The linguistic situation in West Java area, especially in Bandung City, the Capital City of West Java Province, is a complex one and the complexity derives from the fact that it is a multilingual urban city with multicultural diversity. Sundanese is the main indigenous language spoken in this area. But the mixture of languages in the area makes it difficult for Sundanese language to maintain its high position and its vitality. In the bid to have a common language for easy communication in the urban centre of West Java, Sundanese is facing the problem of being in constant struggle with Bahasa Indonesia , the official language and English language as a foreign language. These two languages are being used as the languages of wider communication. The result of this is the gradual marginalization of Sundanese, which is posing a threat to its vitality. The chances of survival of any language in such circumstances depend largely on the attitudes portrayed towards it. This paper tries to discuss an alarm at the noticeable gradual decline in the use of Sundanese language even in its home base. It examines the attitudes of the speakers towards their language and provides some recommendations as a way of checking this negative tendency and ensuring the survival of Sundanese in spite of the heterogeneous linguistic situation in the urban city area.