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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Sundanese
Despite
its geographical area having shrunken
from the original western half of Java to barely
one third in the very west of the island, and
despite being overshadowed by Javanese and
Indonesian, Sundanese is still fairly secure
regarding usage and number of speakers.
Language
information: Sundanese is one of Indonesia’s most important languages in terms of geographical spread, number of speakers
and
spheres of usage. Currently, the number of its speakers is estimated
the be
around
27
million. Most of these speakers live in the western third of the island of Java.
The Sundanese-speaking
area used to comprise roughly the western half of the island, but it lost much
of its original territory as a result of the westward
spread
of Javanese. Some people still refer to some of the dialects of the Javanized areas as “Sundanese” (for instance the dialects of Cirebon and Banten), but it is more correct to
consider them Javanese dialects on Sundanese substrates (being spoken by descendents
of former Sundanese speakers that adopted Javanese). However, in most of these
overlap areas there are still some minorities of Sundanese speakers living among
dominant
Javanese speakers. An exception is the dialect of southern Banten Province, which is
indeed Sundanese.
Often included in
Sundanese is Badui, once used mostly in Mount Kendeng, Kabupaten Rangkasbitung,
Pandeglang
and Sukabumi, though only a few thousand speakers of it remain. These are ethnic Badui people that call themselves Kanekes. It appears to be more correct to consider Badui a sister language of Sundanese,
having been derived from archaic Sundanese, lately influenced by Indonesian,
Sundanese and Javanese.
Sundanese
has two “indistinct” or “reduced” vowels: [] and its rounded equivalent [] (the latter written eu, borrowed from the Dutch spelling for the sound [ø], which in turn is based on French spelling).
These
days, Sundanese is primarily written with a Latin-based system akin to systems
used
for Indonesian, Javanese and other languages of Indonesia. The reformed version of this orthography ignores
the distinction between /e/ and schwa [] (formerly written é vs e or e vs ĕ respectively). Like other languages of the Malay Pensinsula
and Eastern Indonesia, it used to be
written
with the Arabic-based Pegon script (referred to as “Jawi” in Malaysia),
with the Indic-derived Javanese-style
Carakan script and before that with an archaic Sundanese script related to the Carakan script.
Sundanese
culture is related to Javanese culture, but it is distinctive enough to be
considered an entity in its own right. This includes areas such as music, dance
and various types of puppet plays. Contemporary “Sunda Pop” music mostly utilizes traditional Sundanese musical elements as well as the
Sundanese language.
The Sundanese
language has inherited socially-determined lexical and stylistic modes. However
the Sundanese system appears to be less complex than are the systems of Javanese and Balinese, the main distinction being between ordinary and polite (or deferential).
Like most languages
of Indonesia, Sundanese adopted a good number of words from Dutch under Dutch
colonial rule. Some of these words entered Sundanese directly, most of them via
Indonesian or Javanese.
Genealogy: Austronesian > Malayo-Polynesian > Western > Sundic
Frontpage
] and its rounded equivalent [
] (the latter written eu, borrowed from the Dutch spelling for the sound [ø], which in turn is based on French spelling).