Balinese language

Demographics and current situation

According to the 2000 census, the Balinese language is spoken by 3.3 million people in Indonesia, mainly concentrated on the island of Bali and the surrounding areas.

In 2011, the Bali Cultural Agency estimated that the number of people still using the Balinese language in their daily lives on Bali Island does not exceed 1 million, as in urban areas their parents only introduce the Indonesian language or even English as a foreign language, while daily conversations in the institutions and the mass media have disappeared. The written form of the Balinese language is increasingly unfamiliar and most Balinese people use the Balinese language only as a means of oral communication, often mixing it with Indonesian in their daily speech. However, in the transmigration areas outside Bali Island, the Balinese language is extensively used and believed to play an important role in the survival of the language.

In the present day, Balinese coexists with Indonesian, the national language, which dominates education, government, and the mass media, as well as most formal and commercial communication. The spread of a dominant national language is a central driver of language shift among the regional languages of Austronesian Indonesia, and Balinese clearly displays this pressure. Following the general pattern of contact-induced change, in which borrowing usually begins with vocabulary and may gradually extend to grammar. Indonesian has supplied everyday Balinese with new words, and Balinese–Indonesian code-switching has become routine in casual conversation.

This pressure is most visible among younger speakers, who increasingly turn to Indonesian for functions once served by the higher Balinese registers, and whose command of high vocabulary tends to be narrower than that of older generations. English adds a further layer of contact through Bali’s large tourism industry, where it functions as a lingua franca of commerce. Studies of the linguistic landscape show that English dominates the commercial signage of tourist centres such as Kuta and Ubud, where it carries economic value and prestige, while Balinese is increasingly reduced to a symbolic, identity-marking role.

Although the 2000 census recorded about 3.3 million speakers, the Bali Cultural Agency estimated in 2011 that fewer than one million people still used Balinese in daily life, a gap that reflects concern over intergenerational transmission. In response, the provincial government has sought to protect the language through schooling and regulation. Bali’s 2018 regulations on the Balinese language, script, and literature mandate their use in public space, and the presence of Balinese script on public signage has since recovered in tourist areas, where it had previously been largely confined to temples and other cultural sites.

Dialects

Balinese has 2 main dialects, the Lowland dialect and the Highland dialect, the Lombok dialect is generally classified as part of the lowland dialect while the Nusa Penida dialect is still debated, but is often classified as a subset of the highland dialect. The difference between the two dialects lies in the variety of vocabulary, phonology, and usage of register (e.g. High register vs. Low register). Highland dialect, also referred as Bali Aga dialect, has fewer high register variations, while the lowland dialect recognises both high register and low register.

Lowland dialect

The lowland varieties are spoken across the plains and coastal districts which defined by phonological, morphological, and lexical innovations and most notably within the elaboration of the register; speech-level system that developed through contact with Old Javanese and which the Bali Aga (highland varieties) lack. Due to of these contact shared innovations, the lowland group is generally treated as the basis standard of Balinese; at the 1974 congress on standardisation, the varieties of Buleleng (the capital is Singaraja) and Klungkung were recommended as models, partly because Singaraja had long served as a colonial-era administrative, educational and literary centre.

The lowland varieties are difference by themselves, often along the lines of the former regional districts (Klungkung, Bangli, Karangasem, Buleleng, Gianyar, Badung, Tabanan, and Jembrana) with variation sometimes occurring over only a few kilometres. The largest internal division is between the northern and eastern varieties (Buleleng, Klungkung, and Karangasem) and the southern variety of Denpasar greater area. A salient grammatical difference is that the Denpasar variety tends to lose or neutralise the verbal and nominal suffixes that the norther and eastern varieties retain in full.

Phonologically, the Lowland variety that Clynes (1995) describe for Singaraja has eighteen consonants and six vowels. Its apical stop /t/ is alveolar rather than dental, a feature that distinguishes Balinese from many other western Indonesian languages, including Indonesian in which /t/ is dental. In addition, word-final /k/ is normally realised as a glottal stop, /h/ is dropped in syllable onsets in casual speech, stress falls on the final syllable, and an orthographic word-final ⟨a⟩ is pronounced as a schwa [ə].

Highland dialect

The highland dialect, also known as Bali Aga dialect (because most of the speakers are indigenous people of Bali, the Bali Agas) is a dialect of the Balinese language spoken by the Bali Aga people in mountainous areas and northern part of Bali, especially in the mountain range of Kintamani, and regencies nearby such as Bangli, Buleleng, and Karangasem, as well in Nusa Penida. According to Bawa (1983:394), the highland dialect is grouped into three main usage areas, namely the eastern, northern, and western regions which are detailed as follows:

• The eastern region of Bali Island which includes Karangasem Regency, Kintamani District (or around Lake Batur), Klungkung Regency, parts of East Buleleng, and Nusa Penida;
• Northern Badung mountainous region;
• The western region of Bali Island, which includes Pupuan district, Penebel district (precisely in Wongaya Gede village), and parts of West Buleleng and North Tabanan (precisely in Sepang, Padawa, and Bantiran villages).

Overall, there are two Highland sub-dialects that are distinct from varieties spoken in the area mentioned. Those sub-dialects are Nusa Penida dialect, spoken mostly in Nusa Penida, and Kapara dialect (also called as Bali Kapara) notably spoken in Sembiran village, Tejakula District, Buleleng Regency with an estimated 4,883 users. Nusa Penida dialect was thought to be a different dialect, but there is some indication that Nusa Penida dialect might be a sub-dialect of the highland dialect. According to Jendra, et al. (1997), both Nusa Penida and Highland dialects share the same phonological pattern as explained below:

• presences of in the middle of word, such as in ;
• presences of and affix or in the final-word position as allophony of ;
• the intonation of speakers' speech tends to have a fast tempo and louder stress

However, there are other notable differences between the two dialects, namely the absence or reduction of the distribution of the phoneme in word-final positions.

Nusa Penida dialect

Currently, the Nusa Penida dialect is widely used only in Nusa Penida in Klungkung Regency. However, not all communities in Nusa Penida use the Nusa Penida dialect. There are several groups of people who communicate using different dialects. On the islands of Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan, which are located next to Nusa Penida, as well as in a small part of Nusa Penida close to these islands, there is a distinct dialect that is quite different from the Nusa Penida dialect. One of the most striking differences is in words like éda (you) and kola (I) in the Nusa Penida dialect. Speakers of the Nusa Lembongan dialect use words like cai or ci (you) and cang (I). Another example is əndək (Nusa Penida dialect) and tusing or sing' (Nusa Lembongan dialect), géléng-cenik, hangkén-kénkén, and so on. Only 13 out of 16 villages in Nusa Penida use the Nusa Penida dialect. The remaining villages either speak the Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan dialect or a dialect resembling mainland Klungkung Balinese like dialect that spoken in Kampung Toyapakeh village, one of the villages in Nusa Penida that does not speak the Nusa Penida dialect.

The Nusa Penida dialect is also used outside Nusa Penida, mainly due to the migration of its speakers following the eruption of Mount Agung in 1963. Significant speakers relocated to southern Sumatra, particularly to Bandar Lampung, Palembang, Mesuji, and South Lampung.

Lombok dialect

The Balinese spoken in Lombok is a dialect of the Balinese language of Bali. Based on regional classification, it comprises two dialect groups: the Pl (Pencilan) dialect (an outlier dialect) and the Mt dialect (a metropolitan dialect). Throughout their development, both dialects have been strongly influenced by the Sasak language and other regional languages on Lombok Island. Lexical innovation in Lombok Balinese occurs in two forms: internal innovation and external innovation. Internal innovation may take the form of sound changes, sound additions, and sound deletions. External innovation, meanwhile, is primarily reflected in influence from Sasak. The distribution of Sasak loan elements across the two dialects is uneven, with isolated dialects exhibiting a higher frequency of Sasak borrowings than non-isolated dialects. The Pl dialect, an outlier dialect, exhibits lower levels of internal innovation. By contrast, the Mt dialect, spoken near the island's economic, governmental, and cultural centers, exhibits a higher degree of internal innovation.

Phonology

Vowels

The official spelling denotes both and final by ⟨a⟩. However, ⟨a⟩ is usually pronounced when it ends a word, and occurs also in prefixes ma-, pa- and da-. In non-final positions, is denoted by ⟨e⟩.

Consonants

Depending on dialect, the phoneme is realized as a voiceless alveolar or retroflex stop. This is in contrast with most other languages in western Indonesia (including Standard Indonesian), which have a dental patterning with an otherwise alveolar phoneme series.

Stress

Stress falls on the last syllable.

Writing system

Balinese has been written in two different writing systems: the Balinese script, and in modern times the Latin script.

Balinese script

The Balinese script (Aksara Bali, ᬅᬓ᭄ᬱᬭᬩᬮᬶ), which is arranged as Hanacaraka (ᬳᬦᬘᬭᬓ), is an abugida, ultimately derived from the Brāhmī script of India. The earliest known inscriptions date from the 9th century AD.

Few people today are familiar with the Balinese script. The Balinese script is almost the same as the Javanese script.

Latin alphabet

Schools in Bali today teach a Latin alphabet known as Tulisan Bali. The standard alphabet is as follow:

The Balinese spelling system using Latin letters was implemented in 1974. This spelling system was implemented after the government established the Improved Spelling System (Eyd) for Indonesian in 1972. The purpose of implementing the EyD Bali Latin was to standardize the Balinese language without eliminating its unique characteristics. The EyD Bali Latin is based on the 26-letter Latin alphabet with 1 diacritic namely É. Several consonants such as /f/, /kh/, /q/, /sy/, /v/, /z/, /x/ are used to write foreign loanwords.

Grammar

Balinese is agglutinative. Verb and noun inflectional morphology is similarly minimal to Indonesian, but derivational morphology is extensive.

Affixes

Of the two dative suffixes, -ang and -in, the latter should be used if the object is animate. The suffix -né / -é marks nouns for both definiteness and possession.

Nouns & modifiers

Nouns come before their modifiers, and are often marked with a deictic word, ento 'that' or ené 'this,'" to show that any modifiers act as modifiers instead of as verbs. The definite marker can also be attached to modifiers, especially any which conveys "an inherent property of its referent." Adjectives following possessive (and therefore definite) nouns function as predicative, while adjectives following unmarked nouns function as attributive.

Verbs

Two types of serial verb constructions occur in Balinese. Both verbs are always fully inflected, but in the first type, the verbs have the same agent, whereas in the second, the object of the first verb is the subject of the second.

Word order & voices

The word order is similar to that of Indonesian, and verb and noun inflectional morphology is similarly minimal. However, derivational morphology is extensive, and suffixes are applied to indicate definite or indefinite articles, and optionally to indicate possession.

The default, unmarked word order of Balinese is Patient Verb Agent. If the agent is a third person pronoun, it is attached to the verb as the clitic suffix -a.

This default word order can be reversed (Agent Verb Patient) with a nasal prefix on the verb. The nasal-marked word order cannot be an active construction, because it is marked, nor can it be antipassive, because the patient can't be omitted. It is considered a second type of transitive voice.

There is a true passive voice (Patient Verb Agent) borrowed from Javanese and marked by the verbal prefix ka-. It is used mostly in high registers. If the agent of this passive construction is third-person, it must be preceded by a preposition. If it is not third-person, it cannot be preceded by a preposition.

The second true passive voice (Patient Verb), marked by the verbal prefix ma-, always omits the agent. It connotes a complete event and is only available to some verbs.

Vocabulary

Registers

A defining feature of Balinese is its system of speech levels (sor-singgih, also called unda-usuk), through which speakers mark the social relationship between themselves, the addressee, and the person referred to. The system is primarily lexical: choosing a low, middle, or high word for the same concept encodes politeness and relative status, so that social information is carried mainly by vocabulary rather than by grammar. Most everyday interaction uses the low or common register (basa kapara), whereas the high register (basa singgih), built largely from Javanese loanwords, is reserved for formal, ceremonial, and respectful contexts and is now fluently commanded by relatively few speakers.

Even though most basic vocabulary in Balinese and Indonesian originates from Austronesian and Sanskrit, many cognates sound quite different between languages. Balinese has three different registers: low (basa ketah), middle (basa madia), and high (basa singgih), the uses of which depend on the relationship and status of those speaking and those being spoken about, and most of Balinese speakers use the low register also known as Kapara Balinese or Common Balinese language (from Kepara which literally means 'commonplace'). High Balinese is not commonly used except to speak to pedandas, so few are fluent in it, and built largely from Javanese loanwords and it is reserved for formal ceremonial context.

The common mutations in inherited Balinese words are:

• r > h / #_, r > h / V_V, and r > h / _#. That is, r mutates into h at the beginning of every word, the end of every word, and between any two vowels.
• h > ø / !_#. The phoneme h is lost everywhere except at the ends of words.

However, these mutations are not expressed in High Balinese, indicating that High Balinese contains many loanwords from Sanskrit and (Old) Javanese. These loanwords are identical in sound to their modern Javanese cognates, but reflect fifteenth-century usages from Old Javanese.

In the standard Balinese the final orthographic -a is a schwa [ə].

Numerals

Balinese has a decimal numeral system, but this is complicated by numerous words for intermediate quantities such as 45, 175, and 1600.

Basic numerals

The numerals 1–10 have basic, combining, and independent forms, many of which are formed through reduplication. The combining forms are used to form higher numbers. In some cases there is more than one word for a numeral, reflecting the Balinese register system; halus (high-register) forms are listed in italics.

In the standard Balinese the final orthographic -a is a schwa [ə].

Teens, tweens, and tens

Like English, Balinese has compound forms for the teens and tens; however, it also has a series of compound 'tweens', 21–29. The teens are based on a root *-welas, the tweens on -likur, and the tens are formed by the combining forms above. Hyphens are not used in the orthography, but have been added to the table below to clarify their derivation.

The high-register combining forms kalih- 2 and tigang- 3 are used with -likur, -dasa, and higher numerals (below), but not for the teens.

The teens are from Javanese, where the -olas forms are regular, apart from pele-kutus 18, which is suppletive. Sa-laé 25 (one thread [of 25 Chinese coins]), and se-ket 50 (one tie [of two threads of coins]) are also suppletive, and cognate with Javanese səlawé 25 and səkət 50.

There are additional numerals pasasur ~ sasur 35 and se-timahan ~ se-timan 45 (one opium packet [costing 45 coins]), and a compound telung-benang (three threads [of coins]) for 75.

* A less productive combining form of a- 1 is sa-, as can be seen in many of the numbers below. It, ulung-, and sangang- are from Javanese. Tiga 3 is from Sanskrit trika. Dasa 10 is from Sanskrit daśa.

Higher numbers

The unit combining forms are combined with atus 100, atak 200, amas 400, tali 1000, laksa 10,000, keti 100,000, and yuta 1,000,000 as they do with dasa 10:

Atak is a 'bundle' (of 200 coins) and amas is 'gold' (a gold coin being worth 400 copper coins). In addition, there is karobelah 150, lebak 175, and sepa (one pa?) for 1600. At least karobelah has a cognate in Javanese, ro-bəlah, where ro- is the short form for two (as in rolas 12).

Pronouns

Kinship terms can be used as pronouns. If these pronouns are used as agents, they refer to either the speaker or the listener, depending on context. Though first and second person pronouns need no antecedent to be understood, third person pronouns do.

Time

Instead of grammatical tense, Balinese uses temporal adverbs to talk about time.

For present tense, the adverb jani ("now") can be either definite or indefinite depending on context. Its more emphatic form, jani san ("right now"), is definite. The indefinite word ajanian ("up to now") refers to any time before or during the utterance.

The word buin/bin ("again") is obligatory for puan and telun to clarify that they are not being used for their past tense meanings. Mani, manian, and puan can all be prefixed with mani to refer to the future.

Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Balinese script

ᬲᬫᬶᬫᬦᬸᬲᬦᬾᬲᬦᬾᬜ᭄ᬭᬸᬯᬤᬶᬯᬦ᭄ᬢᬄᬫᬭ᭄ᬤᬾᬓᬢᬸᬃᬫᬤᬸᬯᬾᬓᬳᬸᬢ᭄ᬢᬫᬳᬦ᭄ᬮᬦ᭄ᬳᬓ᭄ᬳᬓ᭄ᬲᬦᬾᬧᬢᭂᬄ᭟ᬲᬫᬶᬓᬮᬸᬕ᭄ᬭᬵᬳᬶᬦ᭄ᬧᬧᬶᬦᭂᬄᬮᬦ᭄ᬳᬶᬤᭂᬧ᭄ᬢᬸᬃᬫᬗ᭄ᬤᬦᬾᬧᬟᬫᬲᬯᬶᬢ᭄ᬭᬫᭂᬮᬭᬧᬦ᭄ᬲᭂᬫᬗᬢ᭄ᬧᬓᬸᬮᬯᬭ᭄ᬕᬳᬦ᭄᭞

Romanised

Sami manusané sané nyruwadi wantah mardéka tur maduwé kautamaan lan hak-hak sané pateh. Sami kalugrähin papineh lan idep tur mangdané paḍa masawitra melarapan semangat pakulawargaan.

IPA

/ˈsami manʊˈsane ˈsane ɲruˈwadi ˈwantaʰ mərˈdɛka tur maˈduwe kawtaˈmaan lan hakˈhak ˈsane ˈpatəh/ /ˈsami kaluˈgrahin paˈpineh lan iˈdəp tur maŋˈdane ˈpadə masaˈwitrə məlaˈrapan səmaˈŋat pakulawraˈgaan/

Sound sample

English

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.