Javanese. Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary - Javanese language Everything I know about it

Classification Category: Malayo-Polynesian superbranch Western range Western Sunda zone Writing: Language codes GOST 7.75–97: ISO 639-1: ISO 639-2: ISO 639-3:

jav, jvn, jas, osi, tes

Phonetics

The phonemic composition consists of 6 vowels (a, i, ɛ, u, o, ə), the first five of which form pairs of positional variants (in open and closed syllables). 20 consonants, of which 4 pairs are stops (p - b, t - d, ţ - d, k-g) and a pair of stops (č - dʒ).

In verbal stress, the longitudinal (quantitative) characteristic predominates.

Morphology

The peculiarity of the Javanese language is its trinity. Each concept corresponds to three words, depending on the style of speech. There is a language for the family and the street (Ngoko), there is a neutral language (Madya) and there is a language for banquets and diplomacy (Kromo). For example, the word "road" (Malay jalan) sounds in Ngoko dalan, in Madya margi, and in Krama radosan. And the word “father” sounds bapak in Malay, Ngoko and Madya, but in Krama it will be Rama. “Our Father, who art in heaven” on the krama: “Rama Kahula hika wonten I swarga.”

Social history

Formed during the early Middle Ages. Literature in Javanese is the oldest and richest in Indonesia. There are 3 periods in the history of the Javanese language: Old Javanese - until the 12th-13th centuries, Middle Javanese - from the 12th-13th to the 17th centuries, Modern Javanese - from the 17th century. The oldest inscription dates back to 732, the oldest written monument - 809.

Writing

Traditionally, the writing system used was syllabary (Kavi, Pallava, Javanese, also known as " charakan"), later variants of the Arabic script and, from the mid-20th century, the Latin alphabet began to be used in parallel. In the 20th century, writing charakan was used in the publication of certain old artistic and historical works. Currently, there is an almost universal transition to the Latin alphabet, although in a number of cities in Central and East Java, “duplication” still remains in many cases, in particular in road signs, street names, and less often in local print media.

Dialects

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Notes

Literature

HumboIdt W. von. Uber die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java. Bd. III. Berlin, 1839.
Teselkin, A. S. Javanese language, M., 1961.
Teselkin, A. S. Ancient Javanese language (Kavi). M., 1963.
Ogloblin, A.K. Essay on the diachronic typology of the Malay-Javanese languages. Publisher: Librocom, 2009. ISBN 978-5-397-00472-5

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An excerpt characterizing the Javanese language

“My friend, it’s better not to wake him up, he fell asleep,” the princess said in a pleading voice.
Prince Andrei stood up and, on tiptoe, approached the crib with a glass.
– Or definitely not to wake you up? – he said hesitantly.
“As you wish, that’s right... I think... as you wish,” said Princess Marya, apparently timid and ashamed that her opinion had triumphed. She pointed out to her brother the girl who was calling him in a whisper.
It was the second night that they both did not sleep, caring for the boy who was burning in the heat. All these days, not trusting their home doctor and waiting for the one for whom they had been sent to the city, they took this or that remedy. Exhausted by insomnia and anxious, they dumped their grief on each other, reproached each other and quarreled.
“Petrusha with papers from daddy,” the girl whispered. - Prince Andrei came out.
- Well, what is there! - he said angrily, and after listening to verbal orders from his father and taking the envelopes and his father’s letter, he returned to the nursery.
- Well? - asked Prince Andrei.
– It’s all the same, wait for God’s sake. Karl Ivanovich always says that sleep is most valuable,” Princess Marya whispered with a sigh. “Prince Andrei approached the child and touched him. He was burning.
- Get out with your Karl Ivanovich! “He took the glass with the drops dripped into it and approached again.
– Andre, don’t! - said Princess Marya.
But he frowned angrily and at the same time painfully at her and leaned over the child with a glass. “Well, I want it,” he said. - Well, I beg you, give it to him.
Princess Marya shrugged her shoulders, but obediently took the glass and, calling the nanny, began to give the medicine. The child screamed and wheezed. Prince Andrei, wincing, holding his head, left the room and sat down on the sofa next door.
The letters were all in his hand. He mechanically opened them and began to read. The old prince, on blue paper, in his large, oblong handwriting, using titles here and there, wrote the following:
“I received very happy news at this moment through a courier, if not a lie. Bennigsen allegedly won complete victory near Eylau over Buonaparte. In St. Petersburg everyone is rejoicing; there is no end to the number of awards sent to the army. Although he is German, congratulations. The Korchevsky commander, a certain Khandrikov, I don’t understand what he’s doing: additional people and provisions have not yet been delivered. Now jump there and tell him that I will take his head off so that everything will be done in a week. I also received a letter from Petinka about the Battle of Preussisch Eylau, he took part - it’s all true. When people do not interfere with someone who should not be interfered with, then the German beat Buonaparti. They say he is running very upset. Look, jump to Korcheva immediately and do it!”
Prince Andrei sighed and opened another envelope. It was a finely written letter from Bilibin on two pieces of paper. He folded it without reading and again read his father’s letter, which ended with the words: “Ride to Korcheva and carry it out!” “No, excuse me, now I won’t go until the child recovers,” he thought and, going up to the door, looked into the nursery. Princess Marya still stood by the crib and quietly rocked the child.
“Yes, what else does he write that is unpleasant? Prince Andrei recalled the contents of his father’s letter. Yes. Ours won a victory over Bonaparte precisely when I was not serving... Yes, yes, everyone is making fun of me... well, that’s good for you...” and he began to read Bilibin’s French letter. He read without understanding half of it, he read only in order to at least for a minute stop thinking about what he had been thinking about exclusively and painfully for too long.

Bilibin was now in the capacity of a diplomatic official at the main headquarters of the army and, although in French, with French jokes and figures of speech, he described the entire campaign with exclusively Russian fearlessness in the face of self-condemnation and self-mockery. Bilibin wrote that his diplomatic discretion [modesty] tormented him, and that he was happy to have a faithful correspondent in Prince Andrei, to whom he could pour out all the bile that had accumulated in him at the sight of what was happening in the army. This letter was old, even before the Battle of Eylau.
"Depuis nos grands succes d"Austerlitz vous savez, mon cher Prince, wrote Bilibin, que je ne quitte plus les quartiers generaux. Decidement j"ai pris le gout de la guerre, et bien m"en a pris. Ce que j" ai vu ces trois mois, est incroyable.
“Je commence ab ovo. L'ennemi du genre humain, comme vous savez, s'attaque aux Prussiens. Les Prussiens sont nos fideles allies, qui ne nous ont trompes que trois fois depuis trois ans. Nous prenons fait et cause pour eux. Mais il se trouve que l "ennemi du genre humain ne fait nulle attention a nos beaux discours, et avec sa maniere impolie et sauvage se jette sur les Prussiens sans leur donner le temps de finir la parade commencee, en deux tours de main les rosse a plate couture et va s"installer au palais de Potsdam.
“J"ai le plus vif desir, ecrit le Roi de Prusse a Bonaparte, que V. M. soit accueillie et traitee dans mon palais d"une maniere, qui lui soit agreable et c"est avec empres sement, que j"ai pris a cet effet toutes les mesures que les circonstances me permettaient. Puisse je avoir reussi! Les generaux Prussiens se piquent de politesse envers les Francais et mettent bas les armes aux premieres sommations.

All I know about him.

Few people have even a general idea about the Javanese language. It seems to me that not everyone even realizes its existence. Meanwhile, about 70 million people speak it – a huge number. His literary tradition is quite developed and ancient. And yet, he exists somehow in the shadows. It even seems to me that it is dying out.

It is spoken by the Javanese. Classical Javanese is now the language of central Java, Surakarta and Yogyakarta. In East Java it is already less classical and is now greatly diluted with the Madurese language. The Madurese generally took deep roots in East Java, bringing their language and corn there.

It is found in enclaves in Sumatra, Sulawesi and wherever Javanese migrants live.

In the past, it was the official language of all Javanese kingdoms and even the court language of the Sumatran kingdoms. The Ramayana and a whole host of other things were translated into it. Javanese was for a long time - partly to this day - written in the Charakan script, which originates from Brahmi and closely resembles Thai or Khmer. But charakan has a clear advantage - it is noticeably simpler than Thai. There are no tones in it, and there is nothing unusual at all, except perhaps for the aspiration (dh, dh). Therefore, charakan is 20 characters, denoting syllables starting with “a” by default. Like Devanagari, if anyone knows. There is a system of vowels using superscripts. And about 10 additional characters, for some reason not included in the top twenty. In my opinion, this font has a little extra stuff, but it's still simple.

Now the Javanese have switched to the Latin alphabet, and charakan can only be seen occasionally: on some institutions, on old weapons, etc. And despite all this, they teach it at school.

For example, the word "road" (Malay jalan) sounds in Ngoko dalan, in Madya margi, and in Krama radosan. And the word “father” sounds bapak in Malay, Ngoko and Madya, but in Krama it will be Rama. So “Our Father who art in heaven” in Malay would be “Bapa kami yang di sorga.”, and in Krama: “Rama Kahula hika wonten I swarga.” This does not translate into Ngoko and Madeya at all, as you understand.

By the way, there is also the language of the theater - it is spoken by the characters of the Ramayana in the shadow theater. No one knows this language at all, except for those who are especially cultured.

The principle is this: you address your father or boss in krama, they answer you in ngoko. It’s just that on the street it’s better to address a stranger in madya. All religious literature is presented on the krama. Javanese is close to Malay, they have a lot of common words, and Ngoko is the closest. By the way, it seemed to me that Ngoko is now perceived by the Javanese language in general. Ask a Javanese for the translation of any word and he will give you the Ngoko version. One girl made a mini-dictionary (without dividing it into three styles), so almost everything there is ngoko. I wonder what the Javanese use to write their Wikipedia. They should be in Madya, but they probably use ngoko...

At school they teach ngoko and madya, but sometimes they ignore krama - I saw a textbook where there was no krama at all. By the way, about school. As already mentioned, Javanese is taught at school, and there are children's textbooks. They also teach charakan. But all this is somewhat superficial and formal. I have never met anyone skilled at writing in charakan, even among the intelligentsia. The level of teaching at school is such that the language is then taught at home, in the family. For this reason, the Javanese do not know their language well. If you ask for the translation of a word into Javanese, they will think and even consult with relatives - especially if they need a translation into Madya or Krama. Not everything is smooth with spelling. The thing is that Javanese is a “crystal” language. The name of the city Wonosobo already says something. The final "a" is almost always pronounced like an "o", and not just the final one. That's why Malay siapa is pronounced "sopo". But how is it spelled – sapa or sopo? I never understood this. Dictionaries write sapa, locals confidently write sopo. I asked to write this word in charakan, and I also didn’t understand how it was pronounced correctly...

They say that there are newspapers and radio in Javanese and they broadcast something on television, but I have never come across this - you need a lot of desire to find it. I have also never met any Javanese who are passionate about their culture. Javanese is not even recognized as a second official language. It seems to me that this will not end well. In the absence of mass literature, language does not last long in our time. Or rather, it slides down to street level. It seems to me that it is even government policy to push Javanese under the bench in the name of national unity. So that everyone speaks a language that is not native to anyone - Malay. It's a pity.

(a, i, ɛ, u, o, ə), the first five of which form pairs of positional variants (in open and closed syllables), 20 consonants, of which 4 pairs are stops (p - b, t - d, ṭ - ḍ , k - g) and a pair of stop-passes (č - dʒ). There is a point of view that the members of each pair are opposed to each other not by deafness - voicedness, but by the absence - presence of slight aspiration. The phoneme k in the outcome of a syllable is represented by the sound ʔ (glottal stop). Characterized by regular alternation of consonants and vowels, a limited number of finals. In verbal stress, the longitudinal (quantitative) characteristic predominates. The morphemic structure of the word is simple. There are a significant number of root words. Among the means of word formation are affixation, complete or partial doubling of the stem. The morphological structure is characterized by a small number of grammatical categories (there are no categories of gender, person, case, tense) and the optional use of morphological forms. Analytical means of grammatical expression prevail over synthetic ones. The noun has a morphologically expressed plural form, the adjective has the forms of the high and highest degree, the verb has the forms of voices. The connection between the members of a sentence is carried out by word order and function words. The vocabulary, in addition to the original Austronesian vocabulary, includes borrowings from Indian, Arabic, Dutch, English and other languages. The Javanese language is characterized by special stylistic gradations, the so-called forms of politeness, which differ from each other in the composition of the most common vocabulary (up to several hundred words). The largest of them are: “ngoko” (simple language), “kromo” (polite language), “madya” (middle language). Their use is determined by the social status of people (age, family relationships, service hierarchy). There is a tendency to blur the differences between these gradations.

In the history of written literary language, periods of ancient language are distinguished. ( kavi) - until the 12th-13th centuries, the Middle Javanese language - until the 17th century, the modern language - from the 17th century. The modern literary language is based on the dialect of the city of Surakarta (Solo). I. I. has a rich written and literary tradition. The oldest inscription dates back to 732, the oldest written monument - 809. The most ancient monuments of Ya. written in syllabic (more precisely, syllabic-phonetic) scripts of South Indian origin - Kavi and Pallava. On their basis, the Javanese Charakan script was later created, which was used on the island of Java until its introduction in the 17th century. letters based on Latin script. In the 20th century Charakan is used when publishing individual old works of art and history. From the 13th-14th centuries. A letter based on Arabic script came to Java along with Islam, which existed in parallel with the Charakan and, later, the Latin alphabet until the beginning of the 20th century, significantly inferior to them in terms of areas of functioning. In the 2nd half of the 20th century. A small number of publications, mainly of a religious nature, are published in Arabic script. Modern ya ya uses almost exclusively Latin-based writing. Literature on Ya. I. It is one of the oldest and richest literatures in Indonesia.

Letters representing vowel sounds

Letters representing consonants

Letter from Kavi.

Teselkin A. S., Javanese language, M., 1961;
his, Old Javanese language (kawi), M., 1963 (lit.);
Ogloblin A.K., On language contacts in the Javanese area, in the book: Genetic areal and typological connections of Asian languages, M., 1983, p. 115-30;
Prawiroatmodjo, Kamus Besar Djawa-Indonesia, Surabaja, ;
Kromo Djojo Adi Negoro, Oud javaansch alphabet, Modjokerto, 1923;
Uhlenbeck E. M., Beknopte javaansche grammatica, Batavia, 1941;
Nimpoeno S. R., “Tjarakan” (het javaanse alphabet), 2 druk, Groningen - Batavia, 1948;
Caraka "The Messenger". A Newsletter for Javanists, Leiden, .

The Javanese language is spoken in the central and eastern parts of the Indonesian island of Java. More than 75 million people speak it as their native language. Javanese is a member of the Austronesian family and is thus related to Indonesian and other varieties of Malay. The Javanese language can be considered one of the classical languages: over 12 centuries, an extensive literature was created in it.

The Javanese language has official status as a regional language in three provinces: Central Java, Jakarta and East Java. It is taught in schools and used in the media.

Scientists distinguish 4 stages in the development of the Javanese language:

- ancient Javanese language (from the 9th century);

- Middle Javanese (from the 13th century);

- New Javanese language (from the 16th century);

- modern Javanese language (since the 20th century).

Modern Javanese has 3 main dialects: Central Javanese, East Javanese and West Javanese. They are all more or less mutually intelligible. The Central Javanese dialect, based on the speech of the inhabitants of the city of Surakarta, is considered the most “refined”, and accordingly it became the basis of the standard Javanese language.

The voiced phonemes of Javanese are actually voiceless, but are aspirated on the following vowel. Javanese is the only language of Western Indonesia (not counting Madurese) that distinguishes between retroflex and dental phonemes. Some linguists believe that this difference is due to the influence of Sanskrit.

Javanese, like all other Austroasiatic languages, is agglutinative; basic words are modified through the extensive use of affixes.

The typical word order in a sentence is Subject-Predicate-Object, but the archaic variant Predicate-Subject-Object is also used.

Verbs do not change according to persons and numbers, and time is expressed using auxiliary words such as “yesterday”, “already”, etc.

Before Indonesian independence in 1945, the lingua franca of the Indonesian archipelago was Malay, as a result of which Javanese has many Malay loanwords. There are also many borrowings from Sanskrit. But there is much less vocabulary of Arabic origin than in Malay: mainly, these are words related to Islam.

Javanese has three distinct styles, or registers, whose use is related to social context. Each style uses its own vocabulary, grammatical rules, and even stress.

The informal ngoko style is used in communication between friends and close relatives, as well as when elders address juniors or superiors address subordinates.

Madya is an “intermediate” style. It can be used, for example, by people who do not know each other during a casual conversation on the street.

Krama – polite, formal style. It is used in communication between people of equal status who do not want to appear impolite.

The differences between these styles are quite strong. For example, the phrase “I’m hungry” sounds like Aku arep mangan in ngoko, Kula ajeng nedha in madya, and Dalem badhe nedhi in krama.

The oldest document in Javanese (the so-called “Sukabumi Inscription”) dates back to 804 and is a report on the construction of a dam for an irrigation canal. The Javanese literary tradition began in the 8th and 9th centuries, and literature on it is being created to this day.

Javanese, the language of the people of Central and East Java and some areas of the northern coast of West Java. Number of speakers of Ya. about 40 million people (1970 estimate). Belongs to the western (Indonesian) branch of the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) family of languages. Phonetic and grammatical features: regular alternation of consonants and vowels, slight difference in voice participation between voiced and voiceless stops; simplicity of the morphemic structure of the word, a significant number of root words; the predominance of analytical means of grammatical expression over synthetic ones. The vocabulary contains many borrowings from Indian languages, Arabic, Dutch, Portuguese, English, and Malay. There are lexical and stylistic gradations determined by social reasons (ngoko - “simple language”, kromo - “polite language”, etc.). The story of Ya. I. It is customary to divide it into 3 periods: Old Javanese - up to the 12-13th centuries, Middle Javanese - from the 12-13th centuries. before the 17th century, modern I. I. - from the 17th century The oldest inscription dates back to 732, the oldest written monument - 809. The ancient Javanese language used writing kavi ; created on its basis Javanese script Charakan. From the 14th-15th centuries. Arabic writing spread in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Latin alphabet was introduced by the Dutch and became widespread over time in the 20th century. replaced other types of writing.

Lit.: Teselkin A. S., Javanese language, M., 1961.

L. S. Teselkin.

Great Soviet Encyclopedia M.: "Soviet Encyclopedia", 1969-1978