Surinamese Javanese has been spoken in Suriname for more than a century. Not only the vocabulary, but also the grammar is different from Javanese in Indonesia. Both Sranantongo and Dutch have left their mark on this language, according to PhD research by Sophie Villerius.
When slavery was abolished in Suriname at the end of the nineteenth century, there was a need for new workers for the plantations. In that period, about 33,000 Javanese contract workers came to Suriname. Currently, the Javanese community has grown to approximately 70,000 people. There are also about 25,000 living in the Netherlands, who left Suriname after independence in 1975. The language spoken by this group is known as Surinamese Javanese.
How does Surinamese-Javanese differ from the language that is still spoken in Java? And how much is it actually spoken in Suriname? Linguist and FoS blogger Sophie Villerius (Radboud University) sought an answer to these questions in her dissertation. Before that, she had conversations with dozens of people in Suriname and Indonesia.
Javanese villages in Suriname
The PhD student spent a lot of time in Commewijne, a district in Suriname where many Javanese live. It is a district with a number of former plantations, where large groups of Javanese found a workplace between 1890 and 1939. One of those plantations is Rust en Werk, where the Javanese nowadays make a living from shrimp fishing. These shrimps are, for example, processed into trassi, the well-known Indian shrimp paste. Another place that Villerius visited is Lelydorp, one of the desas in Suriname. A desa is a Javanese village. Javanese in Suriname were also housed in Javanese village structures. This had everything to do with Suriname's policy of keeping ethnic groups together as much as possible, so that they could preserve their own culture.
Surinamese Javanese live in the countryside, so they are still fairly grouped, which contributes to the preservation of their language. Surinamese Javanese living in the city speak much more of a mixture of languages, Villerius says. Javanese is no longer spoken, especially by the urban youth. However, among young people who live in Lelydorp or Commewijne. “But especially with their grandparents,” Villerius says. Still, she thinks the language will survive for the time being, if only because of its cultural value. “Its daily use is decreasing, but certain groups of young people find it cool to use certain Javanese words or abbreviations at the same time.”
Influence of Dutch and Sranantongo
The reason that Surinamese Javanese is used less by young people is that Dutch is spoken in many families at home. Dutch is the language of education, and schools were encouraged to speak Dutch at home. This would increase the chances of their children on the labor market. Even now, Dutch is often the home language, Villerius knows:“The parents of the youngest generation have already learned Dutch from their parents, and they choose it themselves. Sometimes mixed with some Javanese. They want to pass that on to their children, but Dutch is still more important.”
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Because people switch a lot between Javanese, Dutch and also Sranantongo, Surinamese Javanese is also influenced by these languages. This has ensured that the language has developed very differently from Javanese in Indonesia. In her dissertation, Villerius looked specifically at a number of grammatical constructions and concluded that they differ in Suriname and Indonesia. Sranantongo in particular has had a structural influence on grammar:“This is because the Javanese had to learn Sranantongo almost immediately after arriving at the plantations, in order to communicate with the other population groups and overseers. So they quickly became bilingual.”
Only later did the Javanese come into contact with Dutch. Villerius:“In the beginning, that was actually an unreachable language from a group of people with a higher social status. Only when education became accessible to Javanese and they took up higher social positions did Dutch also come into vogue among them. That is something of the last decades. That is why you see more recent influences of Dutch on Surinamese-Javanese.”
In addition to the grammatical level, these differences also exist at the word level, the researcher explains. “An example is gwenti. That means "to be used to" in Sranantongo. Its Javanese equivalent is no longer used in Suriname. Gwenti feels like part of their Javanese to the speakers. And there are also words in Surinamese-Javanese that are obsolete in Indonesian-Javanese. That they say in Java:she still speaks like my grandmother.”
Rude Javanese
As a result of these influences, Surinamese Javanese developed differently from Indonesian Javanese, which in turn was influenced by Standard Indonesian. However, speakers of the two languages can understand each other. Only the Indonesians often find the language of the Surinamese rude. “That's because there are traditionally different types of Javanese in Java, which differ in formality. To people of the court and to the elderly you speak the highest level and to children the lowest level. The different levels have their own vocabulary. In Suriname, that highest level immediately disappeared, because there was little class distinction. Most Javanese were agricultural labourers. The age difference was still there. But now people even speak informal Javanese to the elderly. Because if young people already speak Javanese, that is usually all they can do.”
Another difference also has to do with its use. Because Surinamese-Javanese young people use their language less, they speak it less fluently than the elderly. “In Indonesia it is the other way around:there the young people speak faster and more fluently. In that sense, Javanese in Suriname is really a hereditary or migrant language. The speakers switch more quickly to the language that the majority of the population speaks:Sranantongo or Dutch.”