Javanese

Javanese holds a record few people know about: it is the most widely spoken language in the world that is not the national language of any country.

Around eighty million people speak it — more than Italian, Korean or Turkish. But in Indonesia the national language is Indonesian, and Javanese is a regional language despite Javanese people making up the largest share of the population.

That leads to a second fact, and it is the honest part of this guide: Javanese is losing ground among the young. Indonesian statistical data show regional languages being abandoned by younger generations, and field research in East Java finds that people under twenty-five often choose Indonesian even when speaking to their elders.

Why? One reason sits inside the language itself, and it is also what makes Javanese most worth learning. Javanese has speech levels — the same idea must be expressed with completely different words depending on who you are talking to. Not a change of pronoun as in French tu and vous, but a change of the verbs and the nouns themselves.

The consequence: speaking Javanese to an elder requires a second vocabulary. Young people who do not hold that vocabulary securely find it safer to switch to Indonesian, which has no such system. This is one of the clearest examples anywhere of a language's structure bearing on its fate.

What sets Javanese apart from the languages around it is the speech level system.

Not a change of pronoun, as French switches tu for vous. But two entirely separate vocabularies for the same concepts. To eat is mangan to a friend and dhahar to a superior. The two words have nothing to do with one another. This applies to several hundred of the most frequent words.

The result is that a Javanese sentence carries information about social relation in every word, not merely in the form of address. Very few languages anywhere do this so thoroughly — Japanese and Korean have honorifics but do not split the vocabulary in two like this.

Javanese grammar has an easy part and a hard part, and they do not blend into each other.

The easy part, and it is genuinely easy: no gender, no obligatory plural, no articles, no cases, no person agreement on verbs, and no separate future tense. Word order is subject–verb–object.

The first hard part: speech levels. This is not pure grammar but sits between grammar and vocabulary — the level you choose determines which word set you use.

The second hard part: the verb affix system. Similar to Indonesian but more elaborate. One verb root combined with different affixes yields active, passive, causative and several other shades. A learner who masters this system multiplies their verb vocabulary several times over.

The third hard part: the passive is used far more than in English. Many sentences an English speaker would put in the active are more natural in Javanese as passives. This is where learners translate literally and sound stilted.

Reading Javanese has a practical obstacle worth knowing in advance: there is not a great deal of text.

Because Javanese is not a national language and not a language of administration, most of what is printed in Indonesia is in Indonesian. Javanese newspapers and magazines exist but are modest in number.

The best reading sources are Javanese cultural magazines and Javanese Wikipedia. Start with an article on a subject you already know well.

In literature, Javanese has a very large tradition but most of it is old text in Old Javanese (Kawi), a language substantially different from the modern one. Reading it is a separate project rather than a natural next step.

One thing to notice while reading: written text is usually in krama or a neutral register, so extensive reading will not teach you ngoko. To learn ngoko you have to listen rather than read.

And there is one modern source worth using: social media. Javanese people write a good deal of Javanese online, at ngoko level, in Latin letters following no particular standard. It is the only place you will see ngoko written in quantity.

Listening is where the speech level system becomes most visible, and where learners must train recognition early.

The most valuable exercise is listening to a conversation and identifying which level is being used, and why. In a real exchange two people may use different levels with each other — a young person speaking krama to an elder, the elder replying in ngoko. Hearing that asymmetry is understanding the social structure in operation.

Listening sources: local radio in Central and East Java, and online video, a far richer field than print.

One thing to prepare for: in cities people mix in a great deal of Indonesian. Street language is not pure Javanese. That is real language rather than sloppy speech, and courses rarely teach it.

On dialect, it is worth knowing that East Javanese differs substantially from the Central Javanese standard — in sounds and in how much krama is used. The Surabaya region is known for being direct and using krama less.

And wayang should be saved for later: its language is a register of its own, archaic and formal, which even native speakers must study.

Speaking Javanese has one practical rule that outranks every other piece of advice: learners should use krama, and use it with nearly everyone.

The reason is the asymmetry of risk. Using krama with an equal sounds a little formal and people will tell you to relax. Using ngoko with a superior is a genuine discourtesy, and a Javanese person will not say so — they will simply note it.

Three things to do early.

Learn the full greeting set at krama level. This is what you will use most, and it makes an immediate impression.

Learn the word monggo. It covers a great many situations of offering and Javanese speakers use it constantly.

Accept that you will mix levels. Learners tend to begin a sentence in krama and slip into ngoko halfway. Listeners understand and do not hold it against you.

A note on context: Javanese culture values indirectness. Stating a refusal or a criticism plainly is regarded as coarse. Learning a few ways of going around a point is part of learning this language, not a matter of personal style.

Writing Javanese in Latin letters requires nothing special of a keyboard. But several things are worth knowing.

Spelling is not entirely uniform. There is an official standard, but online people write fairly freely, particularly at ngoko level. The same word may appear in two or three spellings.

The letter e is the messiest point. It has two phonetic values and ordinary orthography does not distinguish them. Some teaching materials use diacritics (é, è) but everyday text does not, so the reader must know the word already.

On register, there is a clear rule: formal writing uses krama, and using ngoko in an official document is out of place. Conversely, messages and social media are almost entirely ngoko.

On Hanacaraka, if you want to write in it, Unicode fonts and keyboards exist and some applications support it. But it bears repeating that this is a cultural undertaking rather than a communicative need.

A few things are worth knowing when using Javanese.

Choosing a level is choosing how to position a relationship. When you speak krama to someone, you are saying you place them above or at a distance from yourself. That is real social information, not empty politeness.

Asymmetry is normal. In a conversation, a younger person speaks krama and an older one replies in ngoko. This is not rudeness but the system working correctly.

Indirectness is valued. Stating a refusal plainly is regarded as coarse. Javanese speakers commonly go around a point, and grasping that is part of grasping the language.

Wayang is a serious matter. Not folk entertainment but an all-night epic narrative tradition with a language of its own.

Javanese not being the national language was a deliberate choice. At independence, Malay was chosen over Javanese precisely to avoid the largest ethnic group imposing its speech. That is necessary context for any discussion of the language's status.