Indonesian English: what's del tuh?

Abstract

In a seminar on ESP held in Bandung, Andy Kirkpatrick of Curtin University of Technology, Australia, in relation to anticipation of potential emergence of a new variety of English in Southeast Asian region and in Indonesia in particular, invited audience, who were mostly university teachers, to start thinking about developing a teaching program based more on Indonesian culture than on, Anglo or American culture. This idea is based on fact that the vast majority of people in region who are learning English are doing so with expressed purpose of being able to use it as a lingua franca. They are not learning English to communicate with native of English, but rather with other non-native speakers (Kirkpatrick 2001). While idea is stimulating and challenging (Dardjowidjojo, 2001), cares need to be taken before we finally embark further to talk about it. This is particularly important because what we will need at outset is down-toearth explorations discussing issues related particularly with unique features that will characterise new variety of English Of at all any). In this paper, I explore some of potential features and argue that most prominent of all are differences in realisation in acts of speech (and writing).