A Rich Literary Heritage Balinese

Three languages are spoken on Bali: Balinese and its dialects, Indonesian, and a kind of Old Javanese called Kawi. Contacts with Hindu Buddhist Java between the 9th and 16th centuries exerted a strong influence on the language and literature. Later contacts with Muslim Java, with Blambangan, and with Lombok between the 17th and 19th centuries also left their traces. At present the Indonesian language, which derives from Malay and is used in the schools, in the mass media and as the lingua franca of commerce and government, is having a great impact.

Standard Balinese uses different levels, each with its own set of parallel vocabulary, to indicate the caste or status of the speaker visa-vis the person spoken to. There are three main levels: alus (high), kasar (low) and mider (middle). This means that a low caste person uses formal high Balinese words in speaking to a person of higher status, while the latter will reply using the low vocabulary. Only several hundred words are covered by these parallel vocabularies, but they tend to be the most commonly used ones. 

Indonesian is now spoken and taught at school, and children from six years onwards are thus brought up bilingually with a stress on Indonesian. Moreover, intellectuals and many Balinese parents in towns like Denpasar and Tabanan consider it more fashionable to speak only Indonesian. As a result, knowledge of formal or high Balinese among the younger generation is declining.

Kawi is now mainly a literary language, surviving in spoken form only in the theater. Heroes representing high caste characters from the classical literature express themselves in Kawi, but it is only understood by a few specialists, by dalangs and by some of the older people in the audience.

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