Preface

• Main Authors: Jozina Vander Klok, Thomas J. Conners
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Indonesia 2018-04-01
• Series: Wacana: Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia
• Subjects: wacana; journal of the humanities; language; culture; java
• Online Access: http://wacana.ui.ac.id/index.php/wjhi/article/view/674

<p>The island of Java is home to several major languages. Javanese—spoken<br />mainly in Central and East Java—is the world’s 11th or 12th largest language<br />with well over 80 million native speakers. It has the oldest and fullest recorded<br />history of any Austronesian language. It also has been of considerable interest<br />to scholars because of the system of speech levels or styles found in many<br />Javanese varieties. Sundanese—spoken in West Java—has over 27 million<br />speakers, and Madurese—spoken on the neighbouring island of Madura<br />and throughout parts of East Java—is the third largest local language, with<br />counts ranging from 7 to 13 million speakers. Varieties of Sundanese and<br />Madurese as well as Balinese and Sasak—the geographically, historically,<br />and linguistically related languages on the neighbouring islands of Bali and<br />Lombok—also have speech level systems. Each of these languages displays<br />a range of dialects, isolects, continua, and contact varieties and yet they have<br />received relatively little attention from linguists.</p>