Australians Don't Need to Learn Indonesian
Just use Duolingo and Netflix
Before the pandemic, Indonesian-speaking Australians had expressed their concerns about the decline of the Indonesian language in Australian education. There were not enough Australian teenagers studying Indonesian in high school, so enrolment for Indonesian in universities plummeted in 2019, a far cry from the early 1990s excitement.
Then came the pandemic. Australian universities closed their Indonesian and other Asian language programs in 2021, following one year of anxiety coming from academics and the Asian diaspora. Now Australia has connected again to the world, and Australian universities are at their full capacity again. Thankfully, post-2020 DEI initiatives in Australian universities seem to be minimal compared to those in USA or Canada. Yes to land acknowledgment, but probably no to program overhauls and segregation.
In any case, the students return from all over Australia and the world. They are interested to take Asian language subjects, specifically three East Asian languages: Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. No such relief for Hindi, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and probably Arabic.
The alarm has been raised, exclusively by Australians. Even articles addressing this issue in both The Jakarta Globe and The Jakarta Post are written by Australians. The concerns are well-established: Australians cannot engage with the world with English alone. Australians have outdated and patronizing ideas about Indonesia. Australia cannot be respected in Asia unless it’s Asia-literate.
Meanwhile, Billy Nathan Setiawan, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Australia, asks Indonesians to be more active in promoting Indonesian in Australia. There are 90,000 Indonesian residents in Australia, they are encouraged to become the ambassadors of Indonesian language and culture. Indonesian institutions in Australia have to take the initiative too to promote the Indonesian language and culture.
With a deep apology to Mr. Setiawan, Indonesians in Australia see no point in doing so. Like other Asian international students, only a few Indonesian students in Australia have some interest to interact with the locals. It’s not easy to find Australians who are interested in Indonesian culture, even when you’re talking to them in English. The institutions certainly work like TikTokers: Doing the bare minimum.
Both Indonesians and Australians know who study Indonesian in the 21st century. White girls and socialist bros. No Asian in Australia studies Indonesian, whether she’s an Australian or a foreigner. There are two possibilities for the exception: She’s an Indonesian Australian taking easy credit (like Indonesian students in Singapore taking Malay or locals in Jakarta’s international schools taking Indonesian), or she reads The Guardian. But even then, Indonesian has competitors like Arabic, Hindi, and that language of socialism, Spanish.
My Bachelor of International Relations peers took diplomas in foreign languages, and they took just two: Spanish or French. Logically, you need Spanish to understand Latin America and you need French to understand Africa and the Pacific. But practically, Australians take those two the way Americans do: French and Spanish are the most relevant ones for the Anglo-Celts, I want to go to Paris and Machu Picchu, and they are the languages of hot men.
After all, French and Spanish have little importance to Australian history the way they have importance to American and Canadian histories. There are other languages more relevant to Australia: Gaelic, Cantonese, Italian, Greek, Arabic, and Vietnamese to name a few. Alright, French too if you count the older generation of Francophile Lebanese, but Lebanese Australians will address you as “mate”, not “copain”.
Cantonese is not formally taught, and even Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong and Singapore worry about the future of their mother tongue. Studying Gaelic isn’t a thing even during the lockdowns, and Greek and Vietnamese teachers are also worried about their future.
In 2020 the Footscray Primary School in Melbourne replaced its Vietnamese bilingual program with Italian (and kept Vietnamese classes after protests) for a practical reason: It’s difficult to find qualified teachers. The teachers, after all, must master English, Vietnamese, and the specialist subject. It’s easier to find English-speaking Italians who can teach art or math bilingually. Vietnamese Australians also hardly chat in Vietnamese the way the Chinese chat in Mandarin or Cantonese.
We’ll be right, mate,
Australian speakers of Indonesian complain about the negative perceptions of Indonesia in Australian media, and in the past, it was Australia’s fault. Islamophobia after 9/11 and the Bali bombings. Racism after death rows for Australians caught in Bali with drug possession. Now it’s Indonesia’s fault for homophobic penal codes.
Indonesians, meanwhile, also have negative perceptions of Australian “Indonesianis” – white scholars and journalists who study Indonesia and appear in international media to comment on democracy in Indonesia. Lefties and killjoys. Pro-rebels, from East Timorese in the 1990s to West Papuan today. Neocolonialists keep telling Indonesia what to do while moving the goalposts.
But at least they recognize each other. Asian Australians often completely disregard Indonesia and the Indonesians, being a Muslim-majority nation that’s not in the Commonwealth. Muslim Australians are also skeptical about the piety of Indonesian Muslims, and like Malaysians or Britons, might be irritated to find Christian Indonesians who have Arabic names and Muslims who have Sanskrit names.
In any case, only Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese languages have the chance to flourish in Australia. It’s obvious why they are popular. Japanese with its anime and video games, Korean with its K-pop and drama, and Mandarin Chinese with its headcounts and bank accounts.
Indonesian is never a victim of middle Australia’s racism and ignorance. It’s just not rich and cool, just like other languages losing their funding in Australian schools. After all, Indonesian Australians are few.
Even the abundance of Turkish, Greek, and Vietnamese people in Australia doesn’t prompt the nation to study those languages, and Turkish, Greek, and Vietnamese Australians never expect the Anglo-Celtic, Chinese, and indigenous Australians to study their languages. Paradoxically, in the age of multiracial Australia, everyone prefers English.
The same goes for cosmopolitan Indonesians. We tweet in English, we curse in English, and we gossip in English. Our growingly cool media are in Indonesian (with English expressions tossed) because you can follow them in subtitles. These days we don’t hate Australia – what to hate about the country that gives us degrees, military aid, quality food, decent cooking and reality shows, and blondes in Bali? Thanks to China, Indonesia and Australia no longer see each other as a security threat. Proficiency in Indonesian has never been a factor in our relations.
Australians don’t need a language course to study Indonesian. Just download Duolingo or Drops. Just go to YouTube. Tune in to SBS or stream Indonesian movies and series. Indonesian is easy to learn but hard to master. Just like us studying English.