A study of Indonesian Language used by Chinese Sellers in interacting with buyers at Pasar Besar Malang

ABSTRACT

Indonesia is an archipelago which is located between two continents and two oceans. As an archipelago, Indonesia has varieties of culture, ethnic and language. Those differences resulted in difficulties in communication among people. However, it is not the real problem because Indonesia has a national language called Indonesian language. But every ethnic group has different characteristics in using Indonesian language.

This phenomenon makes the writer interested in studying the use of Indonesian language by Chinese sellers in interacting with buyers at Pasar Besar Malang. Chinese is nonindigenous, but constitute greatest numbers of non-Malay ethnic. The writer focused the study on the characteristics of Indonesian language used by Chinese sellers in interacting with buyers at Pasar Besar Malang.

'This study is a qualitative research. All the data of this study were obtained from words or utterances produced by the subjects. The source of data were Chinese sellers who worked daily to sell their goods at Pasar Besar Malang. The writer used observation and interview as the research instruments. To avoid bias in this study, she used triangulation to test a validity of the data she got. She used two types of triangulation. First, methodological trainagulation. Second, triangulation of data source.

Lastly, the writer took a conclusion that the characteristics of Indonesian language used by Chinese sellers in interacting with buyers at Pasar Besar Malang in terms of phonological characteristics comprises elision ( aphesis and syncope), intrusion ( paragoggue ) and free variation. Meanwhile, in terms of morphological one comprises clipping and Javanese affixes.

Chinese sellers omitted the phoneme /h/ from the beginning and the middle of the word. For examples habis becomes abis, lihai becomes liat, et cetera. But phoneme /h/ in the end of the word was still retained.

Chinese sellers added the phoneme /k/ in the word ending in vowels a and i. For examples cari becomes carik, cuma becomes cumak, et cetera.

Chinese sellers changed the phoneme /a/ into /e/, /p/ into /m/, /o/ into /u/, /r/ into Z1Z and /t/ into /k/. For examples dapat becomes dapet, pilih becomes milih, coba becomes Cuba, cara becomes cala, empat becomes empak.

Meanwhile in terms of morphological process, Chinese sellers clipped the word. The words were clipped by omitting the first syllable. For instance bagaimana becomes gimana, delapan becomes Japan, memang becomes mang, et cetera.

Moreover, the use of Indonesian language by Chinese sellers is also influenced by Javanese language. They used Javanese affixes more frequently than Indonesian affixes. There were tak-, -e, -ne, -ane, and -no. For examples takpotong, kabare, semuane, hiasane, takmasukno, et cetera. Sometimes, they combine the use of Javanese and Indonesian affixes. Prefix tak- and suffxes -kan or -nya like takambekan, takitungnya, et cetera.

,The writer suggest that the result of this study can enlarge and enrich knowledge about sociolinguistics, specially the use of Indonesia language by Chinese sellers.

Finally, the result of this study can be used as a starting point to conduct wider investigation concerning the use of language either based on the same topic under investigation or based on different field perspectives.