Three UNY students consisted of Tara Belinda (Communication Studies), Arif Hidayat (Communication Studies), and Adesta Feby Putri Setiadi (History of Science) developed and published a Serawai language dictionary, one of the regional languages in South Bengkulu.
"The main reason for developing Serawai Language Dictionary is our anxiety on regional languages that are becoming obsolete, especially the Serawai language. In South Bengkulu itself, the Serawai language began to sound unusual, because it was more dominated by the Rejang language (Bengkulu Province Language), "Adesta said.
Research from the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) noted that the number of regional languages in Indonesia even reached 742 varieties, which placed Indonesia second in the world as a laboratory for language diversity in the world. However, most of these languages are endangered. Even linguists predict that half of the languages in the world will become extinct. In Indonesia, more than 700 of the 742 regional languages turned out to be endangered because the younger generation was reluctant to use the language.
"The Serawai language will be extinct if the younger generation, as speakers of the future of the Serawai language, begins to abandon using it little by little," Arif said.
Therefore, the UNY student group conducted a study to analyze the level of understanding of the Serawai language of the people of South Bengkulu at various ages. The output of the research is a Serawai language dictionary. Hopefully, the dictionary will support the people of South Bengkulu to preserve Serawai language.(Muhammad Abdul Hadi / JK)
