Loan words from French language have been spoken in Indonesia since the European colonialism until today due to the unavailability of Indonesian counterparts.
According to Hayatul Cholsy, S.S., M.Hum, French Literature lecturer from UGM, the process of the entrance of these loan words was due to the contact with the European nations, especially French people that had direct contact with Indonesians in various walks of life, including gastronomy and fashion. The loan words developed significantly and became important vocabularies in Indonesian gastronomy and fashion.
"As a country with a culinary tradition that is recognised internationally and as a centre of fashion, the influence of France cannot be avoided in Indonesia in both areas,” said Hayatul Cholsy in Faculty of Cultural Sciences’ Multimedia room on Tuesday (30/5) during her doctoral promotion in linguistics.
French loan words, according to Hayatul Cholsy, were used in texts or discourse in any media in Indonesia. Like any other foreign loan words, French loan words also experience adjustments in terms of phonology, orthography, or semantics.
"However, during the process of adjustment, inconsistencies emerged in the culinary and fashion areas from the French related to the phonology that leads to orthography and semantics," she said.
In terms of phonology, the inconsistency is seen in the uttering and writing of the words. Utterance varies due to the influence of Indonesian phonology or other languages such as English. Writing also varies, influenced by the Indonesian orthography system that knows no symbols atached to a letter such as accent mark.
"As a result, the process of absorption of the French words to Indonesian became important to observe, because from this process, the inconsistencies of the speakers are known,” she said.
Furthermore, said Hayatul Cholsy, phonological adjustment happened following the French orthography system while orthography adjustment happened because it followed the French phonological system. Meanwhile, morphological adjustment is insignificant in the culinary and fashion areas because most of the loan words are nouns or pronouns.
Defending her dissertation titled Loan Words and French Vocabularies in Gastronomy and Fashion in Indonesia, Hayatul Cholsy revealed the inconsistencies in the semantic level happened due to socio-cultural factors of the speakers that relate with the reason to the use of such loan words. In semantic level, most of loan words did not experience change of meaning because most of the loan words are proper nouns.
"There is more change of meaning in loan words in the fashion area than in gastronomy because the use of such words in fashion is wider than in gastronomy area. Meanwhile, the forms of change of meaning are narrowing change of meaning, extending change of meaning, and referential change. Of these change of forms, adjustments of meaning happened from the French to Indonesian due to historical, social, and cultural aspects of the people,” said Hayatul Cholsy, accompanied by promoter, Prof. Dr. I Dewa Putu Wijana, S.U., M.A, and co-promoter, Dr. Wening Udasmoro, M.Hum., DEA.