Preserving A Language with Foreign Alphabet System

 

An Indonesian area, Bau-bau, try to preserve its ingenious language Cia-cia using Hangul (a Korean alphabets). This is a good example in modern time where a culture imported foreign system and adapt them to their own culture. They borrow the letters but not the language.

It happens since ancient time. The ancient Greeks adopting the Phonecian alphabet. The Japanese adapted the Kanji from the Tang dynasty. Bahasa Indonesia imported Latin characters as their written expression. Now it happened again in the modern time for Baubau people.

Although it raises a concern from nationalists, the usage of Hangul is justified to preserve the pronunciation. As a commenter, @seokjinnie761, in that video explained:

For those of you asking why didn't they choose to modify Latin alphabet instead? The answer is, they could. But there are some problems related to its changing phonetics. Check out this letter ㅍ, called pieup. Both Korean and Cia Cia speakers pronounce this letter as an aspirated 'p' (IPA: /pʰ/). If Cia Cia were to modify the Latin alphabet, they would probably modify it to a diphthong 'ph'. 

Since Indonesian Latin characters are in favor among its citizens, then the Cia Cia speakers would undoubtedly follow that suit and write the aspirated 'p' (IPA: /pʰ/) as just 'p', because there's no an aspirated character or diphthong in Indonesian and the closet character to write is 'p'. This would certainly have a fatal consequence for its speakers in the future. The future generation is likely to mispronounce it simply as a consonant 'p' (IPA: /p/) instead of an aspirated 'p' (IPA: /pʰ/). 

Additionally, there is another possibility if they continue to use the modified Latin alphabet. For example, the diphthong 'ph' is likely to be pronounced as the consonant 'f' (IPA: /f/) due to the general Indonesian understanding that the diphthong ph is often pronounced that way. There are so many modified latin alphabets in Indonesia. But Bahasa Indonesia version of Latinization is still dominant. 

Take a look at Javanese as an example. It has its own version of the Latin alphabet, which uses the letter å to represent the phoneme /ɔ/. However, this version of the Latin alphabet isn't very popular among its speakers. So most Javanese people use the conventional Latin alphabet used in Indonesian by using 'o' to write the phoneme. This has led to the mispronunciation of many Javanese words, such as the city of Pånårågå, which is now officially written as Ponorogo and mispronounced as /ponoˑroɡo/ instead of the original /pɔnɔˑrɔɡɔ/

I, personally, love this. They can now preserve the way it sounds. We don't need to fight like trying to explain what the Bible said in 2000 years from now. Documentation of Hangul and how the alphabet sounds are already preserved digitally. While ceteris paribus and no World War 3 happening in the future, we should be able to know how the Cia-cia originally sounds like.

Regarding nationalist concern, it's common for local language has their own alphabet. Javanese has its own language and alphabet system derived from Pallava alphabet. In most Java province, places and streets are being written in Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese. We also treat this Hangul as a modern evolution for Cia-cia language like the old Javanese language.

There exists an alternative that can be used with Latin-like alphabet. The Cia-cia language could use International Phonetic Alphabet for its writing system. It's a modified Latin alphabet with accents to accommodate most (if not all) human sounds. Not an Indonesian Latin alphabet, but at least it is a derivation of Latin characters. It is used in Wikipedia to explain Cia-cia language.

However, it has its own limitation also. The fonts that support it are limited. The only fonts supporting it are IPA Kiel, DejaVu Sans and Doulos SIL. May be there are other fonts. But that are what available on the website.

Also, from the beginning of the video, they were helped by a Korean person. No SIL scholar was there. So, yeah, the opportunity goes to Hangul. :)