Konferensi Linguistik Tahunan Atma Jaya 12 THE INFLUENCE OF NIAS LANGUAGE TO BAHASA INDONESIA Ingatan Gulö STBA Teknokrat
[email protected] ABSTRACT As one of languages in Indonesia, Nias contributes to the variation of both accent and dialect of Bahasa spoken mostly in the northern part of Sumatera. It is a unique language and its existence enriches Indonesian cultures and linguistic heritage. When speaking Indonesian, many Nias native speakers who live in Nias Island and those who live in the areas close to the island ‘puts some colors’ in the language. This is an analytical-qualitative paper resulted from observations on how Indonesian is spoken by those whose mother tongue is Nias in different areas. The paper shows how and in what areas of linguistics Indonesian is influenced by Nias. The influence covers issues like stress position, pronunciation, deletion or addition of consonant sounds in the end of syllables, and grammatical order. The interference of the factors discussed, however, depends on the speakers’ ability and frequency in speaking Indonesian. Many Nias native speakers have mastered Bahasa fluently and face no linguistic interference at all. Key words: Nias, Indonesian, Interference, Accent, Dialect
INTRODUCTION Nias or Li Niha is the language spoken mainly by the people who live in Nias Island located on the west part of North Sumatera and by Nias people who have moved to other cities like Sibolga, Medan, Padang, or Pekan Baru. This language is spoken only by around 700.000 people (Brown, 2001: xi). It has some unique characteristics (Crysmann, 2009; Blust, 2013: 672; Gulö, 2014: 129) which should make Indonesians in general and Nias native speakers especially proud to have this language. Unfortunately, there are various factors which put this language in danger of extinction (Duha, 2011: 171). An attempt to develop Nias and pose its linguistic features to linguistics world has underlined one of basic objectives of this study. As national language of Indonesia, in the other hand, Bahasa is well-known throughout the country. Its rapid growth shows its essential role in many aspects of life like in economy, politics, and mass media (Sneddon, 1996: 2). In its process of being learned by people from different regions and various linguistic backgrounds, and in addition to ‘forcing young people to leave’ their mother tongues, this language starts to appear in new accents and dialects as the result of cultural and linguistic interchange. Contact between languages according to Lightbown and Spada (2006: 78) leads language users or learners to produce sentences that are not exactly like those they have heard or learned. They form sentences based on prior knowledge. Although the influence and interference between languages depend on many factors - one of which is the learner’s age when learning the language (Escudero, 2005: 144) - they are inevitable in the process of learning languages. This paper is a result of observations processed by descriptive-analytical qualitative method that makes use of available facts or information to analyze and to make a critical evaluation (Kothari, 2004: 110; Stake, 2010: 19, 20). The findings presented here are applicable to the influences of Nias to other languages but this possibility depends on linguistic features of those languages. The focus of this research is on the influence of Nias to Bahasa rather than the opposite direction because in fact it is the speakers of Nias, in most cases, who learn Bahasa as their second language. This paper aims not only for practical purposes to these speakers in learning Indonesian but also for theoretical objectives in the world of linguistics. DISCUSSION Stress Position As stresses carry the properties of certain syllables, effort is needed to make them stand out from the rest of the word or syllables (Birjandi & Nodoushan, 2005: 99-100). It is a well-known fact that phonological stress results in phonetic consequences across languages (Gussenhoven, 2004: 14). One of Nias influences on the variety of Bahasa spoken in certain areas by most of Nias people is the placement of stress. Nias words below are stressed in different syllables. ö-li buy (imperative) mo-ŵö-li to buy so-ŵö-li buyer 231
Konferensi Linguistik Tahunan Atma Jaya 12 The word öli is stressed in the first syllable while the other two are stressed in the second syllables. In contrary, the equivalent expressions of those words in Bahasa are stressed in their last syllables as exemplified in the followings. be-li (buy)
mem-be-li (to buy)
pem-be-li (buyer)
Thus, the different positions of stress in the first examples results in the application of the same positions in the second examples. This is one of typical influences of Nias to Bahasa spoken in certain regions of Indonesia like Nias Island and Medan. It is not uncommon to hear words like besar is stressed in the first and menjemput in the second syllable. Those who are familiar with standard Indonesian will recognize this striking accent because they stress both besar and menjemput in their last syllables. Phonetic Change In Bahasa, the letter d is pronounced as voiced alveolar plosive. In contrary, most of Nias native speakers treat the same letter as voiced dental fricative, just like th in they or gather. According to Lea Brown in her analysis on Nias Selatan dialect, d is pronounced with the tip of the tongue behind the upper teeth or on the alveolar ridge (2001: 16). This difference of speech sounds can be seen in the examples below. Indonesian duduk // terjadi // datang //
(sit) (happen) (come)
Nias badu döfi idanö
// // //
(to drink) (star) (water)
As can be predicted from the phonetic transcriptions of d in both languages, it is quite challenging for the speakers of Nias to switch to voiced alveolar plosive as they have been pronouncing d as voiced dental fricative. In many cases, those Indonesian words above are pronounced //, //, and // respectively. Along with the position of stress that may happen as discussed under the first point, this phonetic change results in a different accent of Indonesian. Syllabic Boundaries Another influence on Indonesian (and on other languages) resulted from Nias linguistic system is the deletion of consonants. Nias people usually make jokes about this, and to illustrate the point it is considered valuable to bring it up here. When talking to friends, one might produce certain amusing strings of words like maka-maka kaca in saying makan kacang (to eat peanuts) or tiga gaja di belaka in saying tinggal ganjal di belakang (the chock is left behind) in order to amuse the listeners. The word kaca means glass so one can associate the whole sentence with eating glasses as food or with other amusing meaning and connotation that come in mind. Most acceptable interpretation of the second illustration is there are three elephants behind. Typical reaction of the listeners about this is to laugh or to say their own made up sentences. They do these because they share common knowledge about the fact that when speaking Indonesian, many Nias native speakers who do not speak Indonesian very often accidentally leave out some or all consonants in the end of the syllables. Here are some other examples. Actual Sentence Data huja Kai basa semua Tida ada
Intended Sentence Datang hujan Kain basah semua Tidak ada
Meaning It starts to rain The clothes get wet There is nothing
Scientific explanation for this linguistic phenomenon is the fact that Nias syllables always end in vowels (Brown, 2001: 28). Most languages in the world allow consonants to end or close the syllables of the words. The first syllable of Bataknese word balga /balga/ (big) ends in consonant l. The second syllable in Indonesian word makan /makan/ (eat) ends in consonant n. Both syllables in Greek word καρπος /karps/ (fruit) end in consonants r and s. All syllables in English word important end in consonant letters m, r, and t. In contrary in Nias language, this characteristic does not exist (Nduru, 2007:9). Syllables of Nias language are closed by vowels. Other examples are ofeta /feta/ (arrive), alua /ala/ (happen), fefu /fef/ (all), and kara /kara/ (stone). If foreign words are adopted in Nias language, this principle also holds. Indonesian words such as komputer (computer), mungkin (maybe), and kecamatan (subdistrict) become kofutö /kft/, muki /muki/, and köcamata /kamata/ in Nias. Thus, referring to typological explanation of linguistic characteristics, Nias is an open syllable language (Gussmann, 2002: 67). This system of language naturally forms how the people speak and apply it to other languages both because of mistakes and errors. Being so careful about this ‘trap’ of deleting 231
Konferensi Linguistik Tahunan Atma Jaya 12 consonants, in the other hand, one would even end up adding consonants to syllables that should end in vowels. This is in line with the theories about omission and addition as some of mistakes made by language learners (Zaim, 2006: 246). Syllabic Rules In relation to being a language with open syllables, another issue that contributes to the influence of Nias on Indonesian is about how to divide the words like simbo, tambai, and olombase into their syllables. The issue here lies in deciding whether the letter m is grouped with the preceding vowel or with the letter b that follows. In Nias, these letters are not treated as two different phonemes but as one. The phoneme they form is a voiced bilabial trill (Brown, 2001: 13) and is symbolized in the international phonetic transcription as // sound (Lacy, 2007: 4). Below is the syllabification of Nias words that contain mb grouped together. si-mbo ta-mba-i o-lo-mba-se
// // //
(smoke) (half) (get rest [imperative])
The problem is Indonesian treats this group of letters differently. The letter m is attached to the previous syllable while b is attached to the next one. tum-buh me-lam-bat
// //
(to grow) (to slow)
Typical mistake that arises here is to treat these two different phonemes as a voiced bilabial trill //. This results in the pronunciation of words like ‘tumbuh’ and ‘melambat’ as // and //. Despite its amusing sense to ears, however, Indonesian sentences colored by this accent are still understandable. Grammatical Order The last contribution of Nias on a dialect of Indonesian is related to the word order. Nias is a VOS language (Nazara, 2002: 266) with VSO as a variation (Brown, 2001: 306). This means that most of Nias sentences are inversions. Below are typical Indonesian sentences influenced by Nias grammatical system in the sense that the verbs or modal come first in the constructions. Datang saya kemarin Jatuh dia di sana Bisa kamu melakukan itu
*Come I yesterday *Fall s/he there *Can you do it
(I came [here] yesterday) (He fell over there) (You can do it)
These Indonesian sentences are hardly seen as grammatically ‘strange’ because literal translation of these sentences into Nias is acceptable. The sentences below are the translations of those Indonesian versions with the same meanings given above. Möi ndra’o meneŵi Alabu ia sisa andrö Tola ölau da’ö This grammatical issue is really influential and commonly found in the regions where Indonesian is spoken by native speakers of Nias. Its influence, however, is dependent on the level of one’s ability in Bahasa and the frequency he speaks the language. CONCLUSION Li Niha or Nias language influences Indonesian in five different areas of concern. First, the way Nias words are stressed is influential to the way their equivalent expressions are stressed in Indonesian. Second, Nias pronunciation of d is different from that of Bahasa. Third, the fact that Nias is an open syllable language leads to errors and accidental mistakes in speaking Bahasa. Fourth, Nias treats the letters m and b as one while Bahasa treats them as two different phonemes. Fifth, typical order of Nias sentences are inversions and often lead to inverted Indonesian sentences. These findings are generalizations of the data found during observations. Depending on the mastery level or how good the speakers at Bahasa, one might find more or less kinds of linguistic influences that appear. Many Nias native speakers, in fact, speak Bahasa so fluently and find fewer difficulties or show no linguistic interference at all when they speak in Bahasa. 231
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