Page 26 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

the region of Nusantara islands; has Nagarakertagama never mentioned this region? In the
meantime, the majority of the inhabitants from the Eastern part of the islands are included
in the Melanesian race. In other words, the majority of indigenous people of Maluku islands
(and of course the province of North Maluku), East Nusa Tenggara and Papua belong to the
Melanesian race.
The dynamics of moving out and even mixing up which happened in a couple of
thousands of years left the relics which were not in the languages used but also more or
less in the physical features. Therefore it is also understandable that Indonesian islands
belong to a rich region with a number of languages used and various kinds of physical
features as well as colors of skin. It is just that right now either the region with Austronesian
or that of Melanesian majority can be concluded as a region with so many languages being
endangered. Moribund languages is one of the characteristics of the Indonesian islands
right now. That’s why it can be understood that speaking about the number of languages
which are now still being used by the society can create disputes too. How many languages
are still being used? In a small island in the Eastern part of Indonesia, LIPI researchers once
found a language which was only known by one old man.
If so, how many languages are still being used for communication in the region of
Indonesia right now? According to Grimes (2000) there are 719 languages recorded in
Indonesian islands—but 13 may have been extinct. So the languages still actively used
are 706 languages. But this figure seems a problem too, because according to the record
of Badan Bahasa (National Language Agency) the number of languages which are still
in use is just 649 languages. Which number is then considered correct? But if we think
of a certainty without any dispute then it will be hard to get. It is because the spread of
languages and the limitation in the number of users are not an easy field to come to and
not an easy constraint to cope with either. How many users are there so the existence of
languages can still be considered? However, out of the disputes on this certainty, what
is clear is that most of the active languages include a Austronesian group—the users are
generally in big islands such as Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi, and other islands
in the Western part of Indonesian islands. According to the last estimate, 69.91% of the
total Indonesian population are users of one of 13 big languages used by the inhabitants
of four big islands besides Bali, Lombok, and Madura. Those big languages are—according
to the order of size—Javanese, Sundanese, Malay, Madurese, Minangkabau, Batak, Bugis,
Balinese, Aceh, Sasak, Makasar, Lampung and Rejang. The language mostly used is
Javanese of around 75,200,000 users, while Rejang language (1,000,000 users) of South
Sumatra is the smallest “big language”.

26 Introduction

MELANESIA BOOK FA LAYOUT 051216.indd 26 2/10/17 2:10 PM