LAGSUS

The Indonesian archipelago, which covers an area of close to 2 million km² , stretches from West to East over more than 5000 km and from North to South over approximately 1800 km. It is inhabited by about 500 different ethnic groups most of which have their own language. Bahasa Indonesia is the national language officially designed for inter-ethnic communication since 1945 (Grimes C. 1996). However, speakers of regional and local languages often have a limited mastery of Indonesian. For purposes of development communication, the gap of communication resulting from this is widened by the general lack of adequate terminology in regional and local languages which constitutes a major obstacle to their use for conveying innovative concepts, resulting in a loss of communicative sustainability and hence of sustainability of development per se, since without adequate indigenization of the innovative message its appropriation by local actors is in jeopardy.

Primary location: Frankfurt Germany