THE INFLUENCE OF TRADITIONAL MAIDS’ JAVANESE TO CHILDREN’S LANGUAGE

Abstract

Children’s language is heavily influenced by several factors. One of them is the children’s interaction with people around them. Traditional maids are among those people. As the children spend their active time together with their maids, their language is then influenced by their maids’ language. The Javanese spoken by these maid is of different variation of the Javanese spoken by most residence of Kenteng, which is the standard Javanese in Wonosobo. The children in this case study speak Bahasa Indonesia as their first language. However, their language is not pure and straightforward Bahasa Indonesia, i.e. the official form of Bahasa Indonesia. Their language is apparently a mix of Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese. The Javanese they speak is somehow different from the standard Wonosobo Javanese in several terms. There are terms spoken only in certain areas of Wonosobo, such as the areas from which their maids live. There are differences in the vocabularies, sounds, and speaking intonation. Apparently, the Javanese the children speak is influenced by that of their maids. This study aims to describe the forms of those children’s language by comparing them to the standard Javanese. It will be related to language and social context theory.