Sundanese is Not the Punny Language

Indonesia is my country. It contains many ethnic groups, cultures and languages. There are more than 200 ethnic languages in Indonesia and people are still using their mother tongue in daily lives. Every language has different characteristic. Sundanese is one of the ethnic languages in Indonesia that originated in West Java. 

How can we recognize people from West Java or Sundanese?  In Indonesia, it becomes a joke that we can easily notice people from West Java from their accent, especially if they use the Sundanese as their daily language. In the Sundanese language, some consonants are missing and those have an impact on Sundanese native speakers even though they learn Indonesian as the national language at school.

What consonants are missing in Sundanese? There are three consonants missing in the Sundanese vocabulary. Those are “f”, “v”, and “z”. So how they will pronounce f, v and z? F and v, the Sundanese native speakers pronounce the same as p, and z is the same as j. You hear funny as punny; instead of zebra, they will say jebra, or vivid is pipid. I am not making this up. This is a fact!  There was a student whose name is Fajar at Universitas Padjadjaran. Every time people write his name, he always needs to correct it because people write his name based on what Fajar say. Fajar pronounces his name as Pajar. He always tries to correct by saying, “Start with Pi, pictory (he means v, victory), I mean ep, panta (he means f, fanta).”  People think there are no differences from what Fajar says. All p’s, v’s, and f’s are pronounced the same as p. This condition also happens if the Sundanese native speakers speak another language.  They still mispronounce f and v with p. Sometimes if they think about those consonants during their speech, they confuse themselves about whether they have to use p, f or v.

Another thing that we can find in Sundanese is that they sometimes add a Sundanese word even though they are speaking in another language. Like a word mah. It has no meaning; it just puts the accent on what people say. For example, when a Sundanese mentions my name in English, a Sundanese will say,”Her name mah is Keukeu.” 

For some people this is funny. For other people, it is sometimes confusing for what the Sundanese is trying to say in the English language at first. The Sundanese sound like they speak English with a strange vocabulary. When people realize that the Sundanese cannot pronounce f, v and z, everything becomes clear.

Sundanese speakers know and realize this, but it is hard to change their tongue instantly. I know it is frustrating for the person who has that problem. Actually, this problem is not only true for Sundanese, but it also happens in other languages. Sometimes people cannot speak other languages correctly. We have to tolerate and understand this problem. We can help to correct them when they make mistakes if they want to, so we do not offend them. We can give them confidence that they will be able to pronounce perfectly as long as they try hard.

The Sundanese language has a characteristic that has an impact the speaker. So, if you are in Indonesia and want to go to West Java, but you are not sure that you are already in West Java or not, listen to how they ask you questions. When you hear people say,” Where are you prom?” don’t be surprised; you’re in the right place or you’re around people that you can ask where West Java is.