Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, stated in his teachings that humans are zoon politicons, which means that humans, as creatures, basically always want to get along in society. Because of their nature that wants to get along with each other, humans are called social creatures.  There’s a consequence of being a social creatures, each of us cannot be separated from having communication.  Communication is used to deliver a message that is needed. In communicating we need some tools to make it done properly, one of them is language. Badudu stated that language is a liaison or communication tool among community members consisting of individuals who express their thoughts, feelings, and desires. It’s clear that language is an important role in human survival.  Language makes humans easy to express their thought, message, desire, and feeling.

There are so many languages that had been created and used in this world because each ‘community’ in this world has its own characteristics. Kridalaksana and Depdikbud stated that language is a system of arbitrary sound symbols used by members of a society to reach out, interact, and identify themselves. Different people or society will have their own ‘symbol’ that is called their language which is understandable to the members of that society. But it does not mean that a language cannot give an impact on other languages. Moch. Lutfi Efendi Mahmud stated in his paper that changes and developments in a language naturally occur because of language contact between users of different languages. We can say that it’s a consequence of cultural contact between two language users. Without exception in Indonesian, some languages contribute to add variations in Indonesian. One of the languages that had given so many impacts to Indonesian is English.

English is not a strange thing in Indonesia anymore. Because Indonesian people had known about English since this country was colonized by Netherlands. In this era, English had been taught to indigenous (just for children of kings and local officials) when they were in MULO (Meer Utigebreid Lager Onderwijs) and AMS (Algemene Middlebare School). In the colonial era, foreign languages such as Dutch, German, and English has been taught in schools, especially in schools for children who were Dutch nobles and descendants (Santoso, 2014). We can see that Indonesia is so close to English, not just the people but also the language. It’s the reason why there are so many English vocabularies is absorbed and become Indonesian. In the process of forming a language, there’s a system called ‘language absorption’. Abdul Gaffar Ruskhan said that the influence of other languages into a particular language can be seen in the vocabulary adopted by that language and it’s a universal feature of the language, no language is not free from the influence of other languages or dialects.

‘Ali ‘Abd al-Wahid said that there are some factors that can affect the development of a language. One of them is the influence of other languages and socio-geographical factors such as culture, customs, and community beliefs. It’s one of the reasons why Indonesian easily has many adopted vocabularies. Indonesian is dynamic and receives various elements of foreign language in it. The integration of Indonesian with other languages causes Indonesian to easily absorb various elements of foreign languages, especially vocabulary (Mahmud, 2019). In terms of vocabulary, Indonesian is influenced by foreign languages such as English, Dutch, Arabic, and Sanskrit. Besides foreign languages, it’s also influenced by regional languages such as Javanese, Malay, Minang, Sundanese, and so on. The loanword can be absorbed in its entirety if the bilingual who carries the loan word masters the foreign language well. On the other hand, if bilinguals who carry borrowed words have very low mastery of foreign languages, there will be phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic alignment into the receiving language. In other words, loanwords are increasingly similar to the structural system of the receiving language (Imran, 2005).

Word is the smallest unit that arranges a sentence. Even it’s the smallest thing but it’s the key to a perfect sentence because it has its own meaning. A word can be formed as a ‘new’ word and has a different meaning than before by doing grammatical processes such as affixing, repetition or compounding. A new word that formed from the absorption process is called loanwords. Loanwords are vocabularies that are taken or absorbed from a donor language by adjusting the existing rules in the absorbent language, namely the model. Absorption from one language to another can occur lexically. Simply, loanwords also mean words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language. Another name of a loanoword is a borrowing. In this process, it can be the absorption of the sound process. Another type of absorption is structural absorption, it involves morphemes, phonemes, and sentences. The type of absorption that is easily found is lexical absorption. 

Moeliono describes several factors that occur in word absorption. The first is frugality, the collection of new words can be considered as an example of human perception to find a more efficient way. It’s more economical to choose a word that is already ready than to give a new description every time in one's own language. The second is Basket of Forms, native words that rarely appear in everyday language use are not found in the active vocabulary of language speakers. Words that we use often will more easily arise in our memory, whenever needed. The third is the need for similar words which have close meaning, a monolingual who wants to expand his vocabulary depends on his own language. Merely, while a bilingual has more opportunities to draw from English in his renewal efforts. The fourth is the feeling of a bilingual that the difference in meaning in his own language is not accurate enough this feeling arises because he is influenced by his comparison with the other familiar languages. The last is the drive for prestige inherent in understanding a foreign language, Bilinguals will assume that their social status will be getting better if they can show off their ability in speaking a foreign language fluently.

Indonesian loanwords that formed from English are all that being part of Indonesian in the form of vocabulary that is sourced or derived from English and reproduced by adjusting the Indonesian language rules and then becomes part of the language. There are several types in process of absorption namely adoption, adaptation, and translation. 

Adoption is the process of absorbing foreign vocabulary that has the same meaning in Indonesian without changing the spelling, pronunciation, and writing at all. For instance the word: film, data, supermarket, and internet. These words are fully adopted as Indonesian without having a change in form and meaning. Adaptation is the process of absorbing foreign words that are used because they have the same meaning in Indonesian but the word has undergone changes in spelling, pronunciation, and writing in accordance with Indonesian rules. For example, the word ‘actor’ changes into ‘aktor’ and the word ‘business’ changes into ‘bisnis’. The way of translation occurs when language users take the concepts contained in foreign language words and then look for their equivalents in Indonesian. It can be seen in the word ‘try out’ that’s changed into ‘uji coba’.  

In addition, loanwords can be formed by adding, removing, or replacing affixes. For example, the word “association’ becomes ‘asosiasi’ the suffix ‘-tion’ is changed into ‘-si’. In some cases, formatting loanwords can be by changing one or more alphabets in the word into another, for example ‘phenomena’ becomes ‘fenomena’ which is the ‘ph’ is changed into ‘f’ and ‘quota’ becomes ‘kuota’ which is the ‘q’ is changed into ‘k’. 

It’s obvious that every language can give an impact on another language because we cannot prevent the interaction among different languages. It’s also supported by one of the characteristics of language which is dynamic. Language needs to be improved from time to time because humans keep growing and having many interests in living life. It’s common to find a word in a language that is formed from another language. Forming loanwords has so many advantages because it makes humans’ life be easier in having communication with others. It’s supported by Kemmer’s statement, she said that borrowing of words can go in both directions between the two languages in contact, but often there’s an asymmetry, such that more words go from one side to the other. In this case the source language community has some advantage of power, prestige and/or wealth that makes the objects and ideas it brings desirable and useful to the borrowing language community. But in forming loanwords there are terms that should be obeyed so that the words can be used and understood clearly.

Author: Bening Nur Annisa/Kontributor

Penulis merupakan mahasiswa jurusan Sastra Inggris UIN Bandung dan anggota LPB angkatan Red Lotus.