Sharing About My Literacy Identity

INTRODUCTION

Hey! In this article I am going to share about my literacy identity. First thing first, yes, I was born and raised here in Yogyakarta. Of course, my first language is Javanese. I speak to my family and most of my friends using Javanese, so basically Javanese is my mother tongue. 

Moving to my second language, my second language is Indonesian. Maybe you might be wondering “Why is Indonesian not your first language?” Well yeah I am an Indonesian but I am also a Javanese. Here in Indonesia, everyone speaks their local language and considers it as their mother tongue. 

Lastly, my third language is a foreign language which is English. I started to know English when I was 10. At that time I was always thinking that speaking English is so hard because I grew up in a non English speaking country. The fact that all my family at home are speaking fully Javanese on every occasion. Therefore, I don’t really have the opportunities to speak other languages including Indonesian.

INPUT

My parents taught me everything using Javanese since I was a baby. Time by time I could speak Javanese naturally. What about Indonesian? Well I heard and learned Indonesian through school when I was in kindergarten. In addition, I also listened to Indonesian songs and watched national television a lot. Here I am saying that the environment is the main influence to master a language.

Where did I start to learn English?

When I was in 5th grade, for the first time I listened to an English song “25 Minutes” by Michael Learns to Rock. It took more than a week to be able to sing the song. From there I became more interested in English. Finally when I got in highschool, I realized that I did not have a supporting environment so I created “that” environment. I started to listen to more  English songs, watch English movies without Indonesian subtitles, and make some friends from abroad.

LITERACY PRACTICE

As an individual who speaks three different languages. It is very important to use those languages in a balanced way. My tongue tends to get split up when it comes to mixing the three languages. Mixing the three languages means that we are not only switching one language to another language but also we are changing the accent, how we speak, and even our behavior. In my opinion mixing languages is not a good idea, we can speak only one language so that we can focus only on that thing.

Sometimes, how the words are written are quite similar to one another. For instance, same (English) and sama (Indonesian). Another example, strawberry (English) and stroberi (Indonesian). Positively, this similar thing helps me a lot to learn a new language since it has the same meaning.

On the other hand, I find it difficult to understand the meaning of a word. Sometimes it’s written pretty similar but in fact it has a different meaning. For instance, when my friend says monggo (Sundanese) means “go ahead” or “please”  while mangga (Indonesian) means mango. Somehow it makes me confused because I consider mangga as mango , due to the fact that I am not familiar with Sundanese, and the word “mangga” has been imprinted in my brain as mango. 

Javanese is the hardest language compared to the two others. Indonesian and English have two expressions which are informal and formal. When it comes to Javanese, it has about 4 levels of expression so it's different how we speak to specific people (older, younger, or friends). I was afraid if I used the wrong expression to the people. Honestly, I am comfortable speaking Indonesian and English instead of Javanese.

Thank you for reading and see you next time!