Language
The Sundanese language is spoken by approximately 27 million people and is the second most widely-spoken regional language in Indonesia, after Javanese. The 2000 Indonesia Census put this figure at 30.9 million. This language is spoken in the southern part of the Banten province, and most of West Java and eastwards as far as the Pamali River in Brebes, Central Java.
Sundanese is more closely related to Malay and Minang than it is to Javanese, although Sundanese has borrowed the language levels denoting rank and respect. There are several dialects of Sundanese, from the Sunda–Banten dialect to the Sunda–Central Javanese dialect which mixes elements of Javanese. Some of the most distinct dialects are from Banten, Bogor, Priangan, and Cirebon. In Central Java, Sundanese is spoken in some of the Cilacap region and some of the Brebes region. It is known that the finest Sundanese dialect — which is considered as its original form — are those spoken in Ciamis, Tasikmlaya, Garut, Bandung, Sumedang, Sukabumi, and Cianjur. Dialect spoken by people living in Cianjur is considered as the most refined Sundanese. While Sundanese spoken on north coast, Banten and Cirebon is considered less refined. While the language spoken by the people of Baduy is considered the archaic type of Sundanese language, before the Sundanese people adopt the concept of language stratification to denote rank and respect as demonstrated (and influenced) by Javanese.
Today, Sundanese language are mostly written in latin alphabet. The example of Sundanese-language media is Mangle Magazine that is written in latin alphabet. However, there is an effort to revive Sundanese script that have been used by ancient Sundanese between 14th and 18th centuries. The example are the street names in Bandung and several cities in West Java are written in both latin and Sundanese scripts.
Read more about this topic: Sundanese People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“I invented the colors of the vowels!—A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green—I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.”
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“No language is rude that can boast polite writers.”
—Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898)