UMM and Ministry of Education and Culture Introducing Indonesian Dictionary with local Language

Language is used for communication and is an identity of someone. Good language is the language that always has new vocabularies which can be applied in both written and spoken. Considering this, Indonesian Language and Literature department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education (FKIP) University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM) collaborated with Language and Culture Development of Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia held Indonesian Language dissemination event by taking a theme Dissemination of Language Proficiency Guidelines on Thursday (20/9) attended by the Head of Language Development Center Danu Ismadi, Head of Sub Language Proficiency Guidelines Board Atikah Sholihah, and Head of Language Center of East Java Mustakim.

Danu Ismadi conveyed that Language Center develops several guidelines to improve the Indonesian proficiency of Indonesian people as stated on Regulation No.24 about four main mandates of Language Center. “Those four mandates are language and literature development, language and literature training, language and local literature protection, and making Indonesian as international language”.

In order to develop language and literature, Language Center created two alternatives to access Indonesian Dictionary (KBBI) both online and offline. KBBI can be accessed through website and KBBI application for online, while the offline is KBBI-printed version.

Based on the data, 25 million people have accessed KBBI by online. This is easier than accessing it by offline, because KBBI dictionary is 20cm thick, 3 kilograms weight, and had 2.014 pages. “We can have backache if we bring the dictionary everywhere we go”.

This dictionary provides the original language from the region in Indonesia. It is possible for users to respond interactively. “Interactive dictionary can be accessed and can provide access to add vocabularies. This is for free, anyway and can be accessed anytime”.

UMM Rector Fauzan conveyed that language development cannot be separated by Science and Technology also globalization. “Language is affected by technology development”.

This event was attended by teachers, lecturers, students, language ambassadors, and language activists. One of the language ambassadors, Fajar said that socialization about Indonesian language is important for the youths who like to speak foreign languages for daily communication. “Indonesian people are less proud of their mother tongue. They tend to communicate by using foreign language. Let’s use Bahasa Indonesia in social media, for presentation, and in all activities we do”. (lus)