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some way reducing the ‘purity’ or ‘authenticity’ of a language, linguists consider that
linguistic borrowing is both normal and useful. It is part of the natural interaction between
languages. Loan words are introduced into a language when there is a need to describe
new concepts or things and no appropriate term exists in that language. In some cases,
loan words are introduced because they are seen as having a higher prestige than an
existing local alternative.
Important features of language contact and language change in Indonesia have
been the interactions between regional Austronesian and Non-Austronesian languages,
the spread and influence of varieties of Malay to other regions, frequently as a lingua
franca in a multilingual context, the impact of other local languages as lingua francas
on smaller local languages, and more recently, the impact of the growth of Bahasa
Indonesia on local, indigenous languages. Presently occurring changes and processes
are taking place in situations which have resulted from other changes in the past.
Studying such a geographically widespread and linguistically diverse situation requires
comprehensive research.
A number of linguistic scholars during the Dutch colonial period collected data on the
different languages in the archipelago. One important work that gives us a picture of the
language situation at that time was performed by K.F. Holle. He spent 40 years surveying
244 local languages from all over Indonesia and was able to compile word lists for them. In
order to make Holle’s work more widely available and accessible, Stokhof organized and
edited 1,546 of Holle’s lexical lists (Holle et al., 1980).
Holle’s word lists were published in Pacific Linguistics, a journal dedicated to studies on
Austronesian and Oceanic languages. They are prefaced by a comprehensive description
of the reasons for the study and the background of the list itself (PLD-17, 1980). The list
of non-Austronesian languages is published in volume 5.1 (PLD-52, 1982), 5.2 (PLD-53,
1983), and 11 (PLD-81, 1987). Other than that, a special description of Non-Austronesian
languages in Nusa Tenggara Timur compiled by Stokhof can be found in PLB-43 (1975).
Despite the comprehensiveness and ambitiousness of the study, the lexical data is not
complete in all cases. For some languages, it is complete, while for others it is incomplete
or inadequate. Further research into Austronesian loan words would be useful. By looking
at the loan words from Austronesian into Non-Austronesian languages, and comparing
the data in the Holle list with data from the present day, we can get a good picture of the
extent and rate of change going on, and its impact on the Non-Austronesian langauges
since the colonial period.

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