Regional Languages Threatened With Extinction

TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: A hundred out of 600 regional languages in various Indonesian dialects are threatened with extinction. According to the Director of the Language Center at the Department of National Education Dendy Sugono , the dying regional languages are mostly in the central and eastern regions of Indonesia. Of the nearly extinct languages, six languages of East Nusa Tenggara and Papua are confirmed as gone. "There is no regeneration of the language users," said Dendy at the Language Center office yesterday (11/9) in Jakarta. In addition to the lack of regeneration, said Dendy, the important factor that causes the extinction is that the users are not yet literate. So "there is no documentation for their languages. If those languages were documented, they might be traced," he said.

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