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25 August 2020
Surabaya Language Festival: Celebrating Language Diversity
Project leader: Mr. Ario Bimo Utomo
Level of education and university: Master, University of Sydney
Collaborating Organisations: -
Project Location: Jawa Timur
Activity Type: Training, workshop or seminar
Sector: Education and Training
Project Rationale:
Riza (2008) writes that worldwide, a language is being lost on average every two weeks. When a language dies, it also takes away its rich culture which should have been passed to the next generations.
Despite being well known as a linguistically diverse country, only second to Papua New Guinea, Indonesia has been battling the symptoms of language death among hundreds of minor languages. As reported also by Syarifuddin (2016) in his article for the Jakarta Post, a total of 138 Indonesian local languages have been labeled as “threatened” (98 languages), “nearly extinct” (28 languages), and “extinct” (12 languages). The “threatened” status of the languages are signaling the insignificant use by its speakers, reflecting a continual decrease of the language being practiced in its community.
On the other hand, Australia is also a community with a very broad socio-linguistic background. According to a 2016 census, more than a quarter of Australians were born overseas. At the same time, Australia is home to hundreds of Aboriginal languages which are endangered as they have only small numbers of speakers.
Project Beneficiaries:
- 20 students from the International Relations Department of Universitas Pembangunan Nasional "Veteran" Jawa Timur.
- 10 language representatives of endangered languages, 7 from Indonesia and 3 from Australia.
Priority Development Area:
Human development for a productive and healthy society
Link with Australian organisation:
Language Festival Association
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