Subject: [Language] Surinamese-Javanese Spelling

Article: De Officiele Spelling van het Surinaams Javaans

Indonesia had its spelling regulation on August 17, 1972. Suriname got its official spelling on August 26, 1986. It was accomplished in a record short time and signed by the minister. Until this date there was a lot of confusion about which spelling should be applied to Surinamese-Javanese. Thus one was looking for some kind of standardization through a spelling regulation. Unfortunately you will still find recent publications issued in Suriname or the Netehrlands that differ in spelling. Here are some of the changes in Surinamese-Javanese:

vowels: oe as in loerah is now lurah consonants: dj to j ...djawa now jawa nj to ny ...banju now banyu tj to ty ....note this is a deviation of Bahasa Indonesia and is Sranan petjil is now petyil but in Indonesia pecil j to y...wayang

Bahasa Indonesia is the official language of Indonesia. Javanese is a language from the island of Java. There are also other languages spoken on Java such as Sundanese etc. Bahasa Indonesia changed in 1972 the super script 2 such as hati2 to hati-hati. Also words like dikota are now two words di kota. From my own experience Javanese in Suriname have a difficult time understanding Bahasa Indonesia...and unfortunately I do not speak Javanese.

-------


Met dank aan Albert Buys