Linguistic Problem

[Original Post at my Blog | My Blog]

This morning I met a visitor from Jakarta in my office. And that produced the final-nail-in-the-coffin moment for me. Why? Because it confirmed my own suspicion...

that...

...my command of Indonesian for formal communications is deterioriating!

I first realized this problem back in Feb this year (2010). At that time, I was preparing a talk for my old university in Depok. And it took a huge effort just to write the abstract & my biography in Indonesian. I even abandoned my attempts to convert my existing English slides to Indonesian. And during the actual talk, I was constantly worried whether my audience understood what I was saying!

That made me realize that after living in this English-speaking country for about 8 years, I now think in English and then translate my thoughts to Indonesian. It's a complete opposite of what I used to do, where I thought in Indonesian and then translated to English.

So, gone are the days where I could proudly brag to my Indonesian friends about my excellent (yeah!) command of Indonesian. I thought that a proof of my mastery is by still pronouncing HDB as “ha de be” instead of “āch di bi”, ASP as “a es pe” instead of “e es pē”, and so on — some were even abit surprised that I managed this even after staying four years in this English-speaking country.

I hope there never come the day where my Indonesian is only barely enough for non-formal communications, i.e., the lu-lu gua-gua kind of conversations.