Anies: Language In ASEAN Needs To Enrich Kokata

Anies Baswedan/DOK PHOTO via Instagram @aniesbaswedan

JAKARTA - Former DKI Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan said various languages in the ASEAN region such as Indonesian and Malay need to enrich their vocabulary, among others, by absorbing elements of various local or regional languages.

"How do you think enrich our language? Absorb local languages throughout the archipelago. Because in many regional languages, the word 'fall' can also consist of more than 20 words," said Anies, answering one of the questions asked by students who took the 25th ISTAC World Professional Lecture at Universiti Islam International Malaysia (IIUM), Kuala Lumpur, reported by ANTARA, Wednesday, October 11.

Anies also stated that he did not know how much vocabulary contained in Malay at this time.

"How many words are in Malay? How many? Who knows?" Anies asked those who took the lecture.

He said Indonesian now has around 150,000 words. That figure has increased from the previous only about 90,000 words when he first served as Minister of Education and Culture.

"So I told my team, we need to enrich our language because 90,000 alone is not enough," said Anies.

The former Chancellor of Paramadina University then asked again those who attended the lecture that afternoon. "Do you know how many words are in English? One million and 7,000 additional words every year. How many words are in Arabic? 12.7 million".

For that, according to Anies, if you want to make a language the official language of the international community, there is homework that really needs to be done, namely enriching the language.

Language wealth is very important when wanting to present it in the world as an international language. Therefore, he said it was very important for Indonesia and Malaysia to continue enriching their language so that they could speak out in the international community and introduce it to the world.