Babel #1: South-East Asian Languages

There are around 6,000 languages in the world, writes Gaston Dorren in Babel. His book covers the top 20 spoken languages in an unsystematic manner. Understandable, since nobody can analyze so many diverse languages in the same way. That approach results in very different info about the languages.

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He tried learning Vietnamese (#20, 75 million speakers). Strangely, it uses the Roman script, even though 30 to 60% of its vocabulary comes from Chinese! It has an abnormally high diacritics (symbols on top of letters e.g. ć, ĉ, č, ē etc). Unlike English, its spellings match the pronunciations – thanks to all those diacritics. Like many East Asian languages, it is highly tonal (different vocalizations can change the meaning of words significantly). And like many Asian languages, there are lots of different personal pronouns – use the wrong one and you are being disrespectful.

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At #16, with 95 million speakers, comes Javanese. Never heard of it? That’s probably because it is one of the most concentrated languages, i.e., limited to an area of just 1 lakh square kilometers! But due to the extremely high population density in the Java region, it still falls in Dorren’s Babel Top 20.

 

Javanese has 2 variants – the formal one, called krama. The opposite of that isn’t informal though. Rather, the other variant, ngoko, is less prescriptive about the “correct” usage of words. It is easier to understand the difference via English words. In English, one can say “cat-like” or “feline”, “read” or “peruse”. The former are examples of ngoko; the latter of krama. Except, in English, nobody would say you can’t use “cat” or “read” in formal setups. But that is exactly what krama advocates say – a categorical No to such words. This is why the krama v/s ngoko split is so vicious among Javanese speakers.

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