WRITING IN MANGGARAIAN: AN ANALISIS OF A TERTIARY STUDENTS TEX
on
LINGUISTIKA
WRITING IN MANGGARAIAN:
AN ANALYSIS OF A TERTIARY STUDENT’S TEXT*
Tans Feliks
Nusa Cendana University, Kupang
Abstract
A study conducted at Nusa Cendana University in March 2007 aims at finding out how a Manggaraian text by Apas, a student, is structured. The data are analyzed descriptively. It is found that the overall structure of the text is good. Yet, it lacks details; its introductory and concluding paragraphs are poor; its word choice is heavily influenced by Indonesian and English; some sentences and paragraphs are poorly structured; some words are incorrectly spelt; and, some punctuation is false. It is suggested that Apas improve his ability on such cases and that the Government of Indonesia and linguists interested in Manggaraian standardize its grammar.
Abstrak
Sebuah studi yang dilaksanakan di Universitas Nusa Cendana pada bulan Maret 2007 bertujuan untuk mengetahui struktur sebuah teks dalam bahasa Manggarai yang ditulis oleh Apas, seorang mahasiswa. Data dianalisis secara deskriptif. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa secara umum teks itu terstruktur dengan baik. Walaupun demikian, teks itu kurang rinci, paragraph pembuka dan penutupnya jelek, pilihan katanya terpengaruh bahasa Inggris dan Indonesia secara kuat, struktur beberapa kalimat dan paragrafnya jelek, beberapa kata ditulis salah, dan beberapa tanda baca salah. Dianjurkan supaya Apas meningkatkan kemampuannya dalam aspek tersebut dan Pemerintah Indonesia bersama ahli bahasa menyusun tatabahasa standar dari bahasa Manggarai.
Keywords: writing, Manggaraian, and text analysis
In the last few decades, writing has been viewed as power. Those who are good at expressing their ideas into papers and publish them have better opportunities to influence public opinions and, in turn, could make human life better or worse – depending on their writing purposes. Speaking, to a certain extent, is also the same as writing. Those who are good at orally stating their ideas and make them public through public speaking or other means like radio talk shows or television programs could also influence public policy makers and, like writing, could also make life better or worse depending on their intentions. Yet, its relatively limited audience and space makes speaking less powerful than writing whose audience and space are relatively wider. In other words, writing that has greater audience and space is indeed more powerful than speaking (Martin, 1985; Kress, 1986). This has motivated more and more people to develop as good writers by producing good pieces of writing in language(s) they use or are interested in, be it in international languages like English, national languages like Indonesian or local languages like Manggaraian. The problem is what the criteria of a piece of writing are to be called good so that its writer is called a good writer.
This article is designed to answer the problem by analyzing a piece of writing in Manggaraian, a local language spoken by about one million people staying in the Regencies of Manggarai and West Manggarai as well as people in the District of Riung, Ngada Regency, West Flores, NTT, Indonesia, or by people of those regencies leaving in “exile” throughout the Indonesian archipelago or elsewhere. The text has been written by
Apas – a nick name – who is a native speaker of Manggaraian. He spent most of his life in the region and left it only in 2005 when he was 19 years old to continue his study at the English Department of Nusa Cendana University.
Studying Apas’ writing in Manggaraian is based on several assumptions. The first is that Manggaraian, like other minority ethnic languages in Indonesia, coexists with Indonesian, the national language which is far more dominant and more influential (Mbete, 2001: 81). This is worsened by Indonesian policy makers who generally ignore the development of those languages and merely view them as the symbols of backwardness (Ola, 2001: 95-96). In other words, those languages have a very limited role as they are spoken by a relatively small number of people. For Manggaraian, it is even “worse” as it does not even have its own writing systems (alphabets). To write in Manggaraian uses Latin alphabets which, in general, are conventionally applied. The second is that it is always interesting to see how one’s writing development occurs in an environment where writing, like other language skills, in the language is not taught in schools, yet one’s writing grows as it is influenced by one’s mastery of other languages like Indonesian and English in the case of Apas. In other words, one’s writing ability in a language is heavily influenced by his/her writing ability in other languages. This is a phenomenon known as language transfer which is the product of linguistic interdependence (see, for example, Genesee, 1987 Cummins, 1991; Meek, 1991; Tans, 1994). In this sense, Apas’ writing development in English that he is now studying formally or in Indonesian as well as Manggaraian he is studying informally can be
understood and, in turn, be made better by understanding his writing in any language he is studying or using. The third is related to the philosophy of language maintenance, that is, the maintenance of Manggaraian. Writing in that language could help to preserve the language despite its poor role at national/international affairs. The fourth is that I myself am from Manggaraian linguistic background. Analyzing one’s writing in a language that has been a major part of my life is always a great thing to do. Finally, it is acknowledged that analyzing learners’ language use is common (see, for example, Suherdi, 2007; Latief, 2004; Tans, 1999), so are studies on language characteristics (Artawa, 2003; Athur, 2003) and studies on narrative discourses (Pastika, 2003; Riana, 2003), yet it seems that analyzing a piece of writing in Manggaraian has never been done before. So, this research is necessary to understand how essential elements of a good piece of writing are developed in a Manggaraian text.
Dunbar et al. (1991: 6) state that there are four essential elements to make a piece of writing effective. The first is content, that is, what writers want to write about in their writings. To be interesting for their audience, the content has to be something which is new. It may also be an old issue still the writers have to make sure that the way they express it so unique that their readers would like to read it. Blanchard and Root (2004) call this writing subject which is closely related to writing purpose and audience.
The second is logical organization. In order to help their readers understand their writing as they wish them to, writers have to express their ideas logically. Their logical ways of expressing their ideas are usually indicated by the use of such connectives as and, or, and but. The connective and is grouped into listing (i.e. enumeration and addition), transition or sequence of thought, summation, apposition, result and inference. The connective or includes reformulation and replacement. The connective but is in the same group as contrast and concession (see, for example, Jordan, 1980: 93-96). In Manggaraian, the connectives used are, to a certain extent, the same as English connectives, that is, agu (and), ko (or) and landing (but) as in the following examples:
Text 1:
Aku agu hia mo hang meseng/ I and he/she went to eat yesterday.
Text 2:
Aku ko hia mo hang ding/I or he/she goes to eat later.
Text 3:
Aku mo hang ding, landing hia toe/I will go to eat later, but he/she won’t.
The use of such connectives is important to maintain what Taylor and Taylor (1990) call local coherence and global coherence of a discourse. The first is related to the unity of ideas at sentence level as the sentences are tied nicely by the connector(s) used, whereas the second one is related to the "oneness" of ideas throughout the (written) discourse as they are united by the connectors as well. This is what Halliday and Hasan (1992: 6-9) call cohesion within a sentence and/or among sentences.
Included in this logical organization is the arrangement of an essay into three major parts, that is, introduction, body, and conclusion. For an essay which is a five paragraph long, Blanchard and Root (2004: 61) state that introduction aims at getting a reader’ s attention using such techniques as anecdotes, quotations, questions, facts and statistics. They suggest that the last sentence of an introductory paragraph end by a thesis statement whose main elements are the subject and focus of the essay. The second part, the body of an essay, consists of some supporting paragraphs whose main ideas have been briefly indicated in the thesis statement. In other words, the supporting paragraphs are further development, that is, details, examples, and facts of the points stated in the thesis statement. Each paragraph, of course, has to have a main idea stated in a topic sentence and some supporting ideas stated in some supporting sentences. The third part, conclusion, contains final comments using such techniques as restating the major issues, asking questions, proposing solutions, recommendations, and prediction.
In addition to essay organization, another essential element in writing is having appropriate word choice and sentence and paragraph structure. Writers' ability to use appropriate words, correct sentence structures, and excellent paragraph structure is extremely important to ensure that what is meant by the writers can be similarly understood by their readers. In this sense, understanding such concepts as writing purpose and audience is important as it will help the writers to choose words or build up sentences more suitable with the nature of their audience, that is, a piece of writing Vol. 15, No. 28, Maret 2008 SK Akreditasi Nomor: 007/BAN PT/Ak-V/S2/VIII/2006
intended to be read by elementary school students, for example, have to have different words and/or sentence structures in terms of their degree of difficulties when it is supposed to be consumed by, for instance, university students.
The final essential element is mechanical correctness which includes standard grammar, spelling, and punctuation. In a well-established language, that is, a language with a long and strong written tradition like English and, to a certain extent, Indonesian, this could be learned and then mastered for the rules have been fixed. In contrast, in languages with poor writing tradition like Manggaraian, this could be problematic as its language rules have not been well established.
Such linguistic problems, however, may not discourage any researcher to do some research on those languages. In other words, despite such linguistic problems, research on those languages should be continued. In line with the thought, studying a written text in Manggaraian is worth doing. Its aim is to have a better understanding of one's writing in a language like Manggaraian that has no national or international role at all. This, in turn, may help not only to preserve the language but also to improve one’s ability to write in both his/her "neglected" mother tongue and other languages which are more powerful nationally or internationally, that is, Indonesian and English in the context of Manggaraian. In other words, this research aims at both preserving Manggaraian (language maintenance) and improving one’s writing in Manggaraian, Indonesian, and English (language transfer).
This research, conducted in March 2007, is descriptive, that is, its nature is to describe “natural or man-made phenomena – their form, structure, activity, change overtime, relation to other phenomena, and so on” (Borg & Gall, 1989: 5). In this context, the phenomenon to be described is the form and/or structure of a text in Manggaraian written by Apas. Apas himself, now studying at the English Department of Nusa Cendana University, West Timor, is a Manggaraian whose mother tongue is Manggaraian and has spent most of his life in the Regencies of Manggarai and West Manggarai, West Flores, where Manggaraian is a dominant language.
He was asked to write any piece of writing on any topic that he was interested in. The article should be about 1000 words long. The writing situation was made real, that is, he was supposed to have finished writing it within a week. Such a length of time is believed to be sufficient to let Apas follow through some stages of writing process, that is, pre-writing, writing, rewriting, and post-writing stages. In fact, it was found out that he handwrote it for about two hours in the morning of March 14, 2007. After that he handed it to me who then typed it into my computer for further analysis. On 20 March 2007, I met Apas for clarification of the words which were not clearly written. This is to ensure that what is written by Apas is correctly translated into its printed form.
Apas' text entitled Manga Nai One Seminari/ My Heart in Seminary consists of 1,165 words, 16 paragraphs, 85 sentences, and 76 lines including two sub-titles. It has been analyzed descriptively focusing on what Dunbar et al. (1991) call essential elements Vol. 15, No. 28, Maret 2008
SK Akreditasi Nomor: 007/BAN PT/Ak-V/S2/VIII/2006
of a piece of writing, that is, content, logical organization, word choice, sentence structure, and mechanics (standard grammar, spelling and punctuation). In other words, this is a kind of written discourse analysis (Taylor and Taylor, 1990: 28-80) focusing on such essential elements of a piece of writing in Manggaraian.
This section consists of findings in which the content, logical organization, word choice, sentence structure, and mechanics (standard grammar, spelling and punctuation) of Apas text, Manga Nai One Seminari, are described in order to have a better understanding of the text as a man-made phenomenon as stated by Borg and Gall (1989).
Apas’ writing is a kind of narration in which he tells a story based on a chronological order. His writing subject or topic is about his willingness to study at a seminary including the processes he got through to be a seminary student and the “(un)happy times” when he was there. His purpose is to inform his audience who is the writer of this article. In this sense, he has successfully applied well the principle of having a clear SPA, that is, subject, purpose, and audience in his writing, three major elements that have to be included in a piece of writing (Blanchard and Root, 2004).
He started his story by telling his audience his habit of going to morning masses when he was studying at a junior high school in Lembor, West Manggarai, Flores. He
also stated that he did this because he wanted to continue his study at a minor seminary, that is, John Paul II Seminary, in Labuan Bajo, Flores. After that he moved on telling his audience about his meeting with a priest who asked him if he wanted to be a Catholic priest and, if so, he had to enroll himself to enter the seminary. He then enrolled himself, yet he had to pass his final test at his junior high school first before going to the seminary. Having passed the test, he then prepared himself to go to the seminary by having a small party to get some moral and financial supports from his fellow villagers. When he started living at the seminary, he told his readers his experience at the seminary, its strengths and its shortcomings.
The content of his writing shows that he has applied the principle of having something to express and that what he writes is something which is new to his audience (Dunbar et al., 1991: 6). However, he fails, to a certain extent, to fully inform his audience as there are some points that he missed, that is, the dates the events occurred (i.e. he writes without dates). The following text, for example, would be more interesting if it were written with exact dates.
Text 4:
Danong, du sekola sale Lembor, aku biasa ngo ngaji gula wone Gereja Paroki Sta. Familia Wae Nakeng /Long time ago, when studying in Lembor, I used to join morning mass at St. Familia Church, Wae Nakeng (Lines/Ls.1-2).
Apas also tends to write without mentioning the names of people involved in his story (i.e. his characters are without proper names) as shown by the following texts:
Text 5:
Gula itu, lonceng one kamar dami, beho le cengata kae kelas dami/In that morning, the bell in our room was rung by one of our seniors (L.34).
Text 6:
Manga cengata reba hae daku, rabo liha agu ata tukang wuli lonceng/There was a friend of mine who was angry to the student ringing the bell (L.36).
In other cases, however, Apas mentions names of places as in Text 4 above or in the following text:
Text 7:
Eme du tana lena, hami eme ngoeng te cebong ko cuci baju agu deko dami, hami paka ngo cebong one Kompleks Bandara, Wae Mata…/When it was dry season, if we wanted to take a bath or wash our shirts and pants, we had to go to the airport complex, Wae Mata… (Ls.49-50).
He also fails to be more specific in his writing as in the following text.
Text 8:
Nian wi ga, du total taungs sangged seng ta kumpul dise, lumayan nganceng pe campe mose daku one seminari/ That was it, when counting all the money gathered by those people, the amount was sufficient to support my life at the seminary (Ls.27-28).
If Apas had been more specific, he would have mentioned the exact amount of the money gathered in the fund raising party. It does mean, however, that Apas totally neglects details throughout his writing. Text 7 above, for example, shows how specific he is in his writing. He mentions the local airport complex where they went to take a bath during a severe dry season. Such details can also be seen in the following text where examples of some diseases suffered by the students in the seminary are mentioned:
Text 9:
Manga toong reba hae ata toe manga biasa hang de nggitu langsung hena le beti. Conton ga, Hepatitis, Typus, agu Beri-Beri/Some friends who did not use to have that kind of food were sick right away. The examples are hepatitis, typhus, and beriberi (Ls.55-56).
Logical organization is related to the organization of a piece of writing into such components as introduction, body, and conclusion (see, for example, Blanchard and Root, 2004). In this regard, Apas’ writing which is 16 paragraphs long should be divided into three major parts, that is, introduction, body, and conclusion.
Apas, however, seems to have failed in building up a more comprehensive introduction as his introductory paragraph is without such techniques as asking questions, quoting, telling anecdotes, and giving facts and statistics. His thesis statement which is quite unclear makes his writing without nicely stated topic and focus, i.e. his audience would find it quite difficult to know if his writing is about his processes of becoming a seminarian or about strengths and weaknesses of living in a seminary.
Such a rather shaky introduction makes the organization of the content of Apas’ writing without supporting ideas (paragraphs) that move around a particular topic, namely, process of entering a seminary education or becoming a seminarian or strengths and shortcomings of becoming a seminarian.
His writing is also without a conclusion as it is without a summary of the story. This, to a certain extent, could be understood as it seems that Apas was thinking of
continuing the story as shown by his phrase To be continued (in English) at the end of his article.
Despite its rather weak organization, his writing can still be understood well as it is organized in a relatively good time sequence although the dates were not stated. In this sense, the logical organization of Apas writing seems to be acceptable.
The words chosen are great in the sense that they can be effectively used to express Apas’ ideas. Although it is in the dialect of Middle Manggaraian which is basically different from other dialects such as Kempo, Kolang, and Nunang dialects, Manggaraians in general would find it quite easy to understand as the dialect is quite familiar to most Manggaraians.
His word choice was various, that is, Apas properly used words like hang/rice (noun), aku/I (pronoun), sale/at (preposition), hang/eat (verb), da’at/sad (adjective), one kamar dami/in our room (adverb), and agu/and (conjunction). Some of the words used have not only perfect meaning but also perfect sounds (alliteration) like caling le nai agu komeng le ngoeng/in harmony with one’s soul and heart (Ls.2-3) and nuk tana bate labar agu wae bate teku/remembering (one’s) place of birth (Ls.30-31).
Apas’ word choice is also marked by Indonesian, English, and Latin influences as seen in the following table.
Table 1: Examples of Apas’ Word Choice Influenced by Non-Manggaraian Languages
|
No. |
Apas’ Word Choice |
Language of Origin |
Word/Meaning in | |
|
Manggaraian |
English | |||
|
1. |
biasa (L. 1) |
Indonesian |
laseng |
usual |
|
2. |
romo (L.6) |
Java |
ame/ema |
father |
|
3. |
perenta (L. 11) |
Indonesian |
runing/jera |
command/order |
|
4. |
itu (L. 12) |
Indonesian |
hitu |
that |
|
5. |
langsung (L.12) |
Indonesian |
du hitu ming |
directly |
|
6. |
masok (L. 13) |
Indonesian |
puci |
to come in |
|
7. |
daftar (L. 15) |
Indonesian |
na’a wa ngasang |
enroll |
|
8. |
lumayan (L.28) |
Indonesian |
pas |
sufficient |
|
9. |
karyawati (L.54) |
Indonesian |
tukang teneng |
female worker |
|
10. |
conton (L.55) |
Indonesian |
nehu rapang na |
for example |
|
11. |
tipus (L.56) |
English |
beti usus |
typhus |
|
12. |
Pastor (L.59) |
Latin |
ame/ema |
father |
|
13. |
harus (L.63) |
Indonesian |
paka |
must |
|
14. |
pesiar (L.67) |
Indonesian |
lako-lako |
to take a walk |
|
15. |
To be continued (L.74) |
English |
Tau danung cepisa |
To be continued |
However, there are some contexts in which Indonesian words or other borrowing words have to be used because Manggaraian has no such words like bahwa/that (L.19), sekola/school (L.2), seminari/seminary (L.5), lulus/pass an exam (L.18), minggu/week/Sunday (L.29), hepatitis, typhus, and beriberi (L.56) and paroki/parish (L.1). This is also true for abbreviation like EBTANAS or nationally held final examination for Years 9 and 12 students of secondary schools in Indonesia. The author of the text could perhaps translate these words into Manggaraian, yet their translations could make his audience confused since the translated forms are not popular, a problem also faced by Indonesians against a huge influx of borrowing words (see, for example, Tans, 1998; Isharyani, 2006). For Manggaraians, therefore, translations of such words as Rumah Sakit/hospital (L.56) into mbaru beti/house sick could be more confusing and stranger.
Apas is also repetitive in his writing as in, “Poli itu ise siap-siap kudut pande nempung” (Ls.24-25). The use of both kudut (in order to) and pande/to do (L.24) is repetitive since the word kudut is sufficient in such a context. The phrase ngo ikut/go to follow (L.26) as in, “Du kole one beo, hami langsung benta ata do kudut ngo ikut nempung itu” (L.26) is also similar; the word ngo (go) is indeed sufficient. So, the sentences would be as follows:
Text 10:
Poli itu ise siap-siap kudut nempung/After that, they prepared themselves to join a meeting.
Text 11:
Du kole one beo, hami langsung benta ata do kudut ngo nempung itu/When coming back to my village, we directly asked many people to join the meeting.
Apas’ writing has in general great sentence structures. His sentences and/or clauses which consist of simple, complex, and compound sentences, have subjects, verbs, and objects, namely, some essential elements to have a good sentence/clause as in the following texts:
Text 12:
Tara pande de ‘nggitun aku, ali aku ngoeng te sekolah wone seminari, eme lulus/The reason I did that because I wanted to study at a seminary if I passed (L.2).
Text 13:
Woko poli daftar’n ga, nai daku cembes ketay/Because I have enrolled, I felt happy (L.13).
Text 14:
Poli itu hami senget kereba ata lulus masok seminari/After that we heard the news about those who were admitted to the seminary (L.20).
The sentences used by Apas in his writing are generally cohesive and coherent as indicated by the uses of cohesive devices like ise/they (L.7) referring to romo, frater, agu suster/father, frater (a priest candidate), and nun (Ls.6-7) or hami/us (L.14) referring to students including Apas. There are, however, some examples in which their sentence structures are not complete as in the following texts:
Text 15:
Ikang itu biasa hang cama eme jam hang/That fish usually ate together during meal time (L.70).
Text 16:
Manga ca tombo du sale seminari du itu cekeng Paskah/There was a story when in seminary it was Easter season (L.65).
The problem of Text 15 is that it has no subject, that is, the person(s) who ate the fish. When it is written like that, the subject then is Ikang itu (the fish) which is illogical. To make it logical, there are two things that can be done. First, a subject, a pronoun or a proper noun, is needed, so the sentence would be as follows: Hami biasa hang cama ikang itu eme jam hang/We usually ate the fish together during meal time. The second is that the sentence is changed into passive such as follows: Ikang itu biasa hang cama le hami eme jam hang/That fish was usually eaten together by us during meal time. In Text 16, the missing of a period between the words seminari and du makes the sentence inappropriate. So, to make it appropriate, the sentence has to be split into two, that is: 1)
Manga ca tombo du sale seminari/There was a story when in seminary; and, 2) Du itu cekeng Paskah/ it was the Easter season.
Most of Apas sentences are active as in the following texts.
Text 17:
Du jam pesiar hami biasa ngo one Pantai Pede, Batu Cermin, agu ngo one mbaru de keluarga/During free time, we usually went to Pede beach, Batu Cermin, and went to our relatives (Ls.68-69).
Text 18:
Omo kole one mai mbaru de keluarga, hami biasa ba ikang/When we came back from our relatives, we usually brought some fish with us (L.70).
Yet, there are some sentences which are passive as in the following texts:
Text 19:
… kereba le kepala sekolah latang te sanggen ntaung murid ata poli daftar kudut ikut ujian/[It was] said by the headmaster to all students who had registered to join a test (L.14).
Text 20:
Pas du carot le kepala sekolah ngasang daku…/Exactly at the time my name was mentioned by the headmaster… (L. 1-2).
Text 21:
Du ci wone beo, kereba kole laku agu ata tua… /When I arrived at the village, it was said by me to the elders ... (L.23-24).
Text 22:
Gula itu, lonceng one kamar dami, beho le cengata kae kelas dami/That morning, the bell in our room was rung by one of our seniors (L.33).
The words like le (by) and laku (by me) indicate passive sentences in Manggaraian.
In addition to active and passive sentences, Apas also uses transitive verbs like senget/hear (L.20) and tombo/say (L.53) which could also be used as an intransitive verb as in L.46, in addition to intransitive verbs like ngaji/pray (L.1) and lako/walk (L.29).
Paragraph structures are generally good as they fulfill the following criteria: 1) being indented; 2) having cohesive devices such as connectors, transitions, and/or pronouns; and, 3) having a main idea expressed in a topic sentence and some supporting ideas expressed in supporting sentences.
However, Apas has some problems in writing direct sentences in a paragraph as in
Text 23 below, which is of Paragraph 2 (P.2) in his article:
Text 23:
Neteng leso kole aku biasa cumang agu ise romo, frater agu suster. Ai le bugu’g aku ngo ngaji gula, ise kole biasa tombo-tombo agu aku. Pas du ca leso’n, reme hese’g aku peang rewa de gereja, mai cengata romo benta aku kudut teing kereba nggerone agu aku. “Oe kela, ngoeng ko co’o hau ta?” rei de romo. “Kudut co’o tara rei de nggitun ta romo,” wale daku. “Ngoeng hau kudut sekolah wone seminari? “Ngoeng ta romo,” wale daku. “Omo denggitu’n ga gelang hau ngo one kepala sekolah de meu kudut daftar ngasangm pe,” perenta de romo. “Dian monggitu gi ta romo; ai manga pecing cala laku selama ho’o a (Ls.6-11).
The uses of direct sentences which are inappropriate in the paragraph above make it quite difficult to understand. To make it more appropriate, the paragraph should be rewritten as follows:
Text 24:
Neteng leso kole aku biasa cumang agu ise romo, frater agu suster. Ai le bugu’g aku ngo ngaji gula, ise kole biasa tombo-tombo agu aku. Pas du ca leso’n, reme hese’g aku peang rewa de gereja, mai cengata romo benta aku kudut teing kereba nggerone agu aku. “Oe kela, ngoeng ko co’o hau ta?” rei de romo.
“Kudut co’o tara rei de nggitun ta romo,” wale daku.
“Ngoeng hau kudut sekolah wone seminari?”
“Ngoeng ta romo,” wale daku.
“Omo denggitu’n ga gelang hau ngo one kepala sekolah de meu kudut daftar ngasangm pe,” perenta de romo.
“Dian monggitu gi ta romo; ai manga pecing cala laku selama ho’o a” (Ls.6-11).
This is also the case of Text 25 which is P.8 below.
Text 25:
Gula itu, lonceng one kamar dami, beho le cengata kae kelas dami. Agu wuli kaut liha lonceng itu, sangged taung hami lelak. One naig’m hami pikir, ole manga pe dia toko, kao gangu kole le lonceng. Manga cengata reba hae daku, rabo liha agu ata tukang wuli lonceng. “Oe kae kudut bae lite’e, hami hoo ma pe toko lemot. Cala nganceng pe neka ganggu di kaba itua,” rabo le reba hae daku. Woko denge le kae itu, hia langsung ngo rek, “Oe kudut bae lahue, wuli lonceng le gula ho manga maksudn, ai sanggen ntaung ite hoo paka ngo ngaji gula. Omo toe ngo toong, benta le pater.” Woko denge tombo de kae itu, hia langsung pecing liha ga. Maklum ta, ata cai weru jadi toe manga pecing iru amotn ga (Ls.34-40).
P.8 should be rewritten as follows:
Text 26:
Gula itu, lonceng one kamar dami, beho le cengata kae kelas dami. Agu wuli kaut liha lonceng itu, sangged taung hami lelak. One naig’m hami pikir, ole manga pe dia toko, kao gangu kole le lonceng. Manga cengata reba hae daku, rabo liha agu ata tukang wuli lonceng. “Oe kae kudut bae lite’e, hami hoo ma pe toko lemot. Cala nganceng pe neka ganggu di kaba itua,” rabo le reba hae daku.
Woko denge le kae itu, hia langsung ngo rek, “Oe kudut bae lahue, wuli lonceng le gula ho manga maksudn, ai sanggen ntaung ite hoo paka ngo ngaji gula. Omo toe ngo toong, benta le pater.” Woko denge tombo de kae itu, hia langsung pecing liha ga. Maklum ta, ata cai weru jadi toe manga pecing iru amotn ga (Ls.34-40).
This means that Apas’ writing consists of 22 paragraphs rather than 16.
It is true that each paragraph Apas wrote has a main idea stating in a topic sentence and some supporting ideas expressed in some supporting sentences. Yet, there is one paragraph, i.e. P. 15 as shown in Text 27 below, in which a topic sentence is just
followed by just one supporting sentence. In other words, it lacks details, examples, and facts.
Text 27:
Omo kole one mai mbaru de keluarga, hami biasa ba ikang. Ikang itu biasa hang cama eme jam hang (L.70).
The paragraph could have been more developed by, for example, stating how much fish they took home, what kinds of fish they had, who cooked the fish, what time they had meal, etc.
This section consists of three major sections, namely, standard grammar, spelling, and punctuation discussed further below.
This is quite difficult to analyze as there is no standard grammar of Manggaraian. However, “common sense” indicates that a complete sentence in a good piece of writing must have a subject, a verb, and an object (if any). Apas, therefore, needs to improve the grammar of his sentences, some of which have been discussed above (Sentence structure).
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4.6.2 Spelling
Like standard grammar, Manggaraian has no standard spelling. Yet based on pronunciation in Manggaraian, such words as sekola (L.1) should be written as sekola rather than sekolah (L.20).
Capital letters are greatly used. Yet there are some errors in spelling like seminari Yohanes Paulus II (L.44) and the words like Hepatitis, Typus, agu Beri-Beri (Ls.55-56) should be written as Seminari Yohanes Paulus II and hepatitis, tipus, agu beri-beri respectively.
Since the language has no standard spelling, it is then uncertain whether the words like ketay/really (L.21) or ketai have been correctly spelled or not.
Punctuation is again problematic as there is no fixed rule of punctuation in Manggaraian. Yet, a generally accepted rule demands that such a sentence as “Danong, du sekola sale Lembor, aku biasa ngo ngaji gula wone Gereja Paroki Sta. Familia Wae Nakeng” (Ls.1-2) should be written as follows, “Danong, du sekola sale Lembor, aku biasa ngo ngaji gula wone Gereja Paroki St. Familia,Wae Nakeng.” That is, there is a comma between the words Familia and Wae as the following word is an additional piece of information of where the church is. Hence a comma is necessary. On the other hand, the use of comma after the word dami in: “Gula itu, lonceng one kamar dami, beho le cengata kae kelas dami,” (L.33) is false as lonceng one kamar dami (the bell in our room) is the subject phrase of the sentence.
Apas’ use of underline as in Mose-mose ata da’atn sale seminari Yoh. Paulus II Labuan Bajo (L.44) is also inappropriate. The phrase should be written without an underline.
There are also some cases in which Apas writes proper nouns informally. The word L. Bajo (L.14), for example, is inappropriate; it should be Labuan Bajo.
Apas’ writing is generally fluent and excellent. Its content is chronologically presented. In some cases, however, he fails to be more informative, that is, his characters are without proper names and the events without dates. The development of the body of the essay is great, yet the author fails to have a well-established introduction, that is, it has no particular techniques to attract his reader’s attention and his thesis statement is quite unclear that his audience would find it rather difficult to know what he is going to write about in his essay after reading his introduction.
Manga Nai One Seminari, however, has various words, although some of them are written in Indonesian, Java, Latin or English. It also has various sentence structures such as active-passive, transitive-intransitive, complex, compound, and simple forms. Despite such a high degree of variety, there are some sentences which are incomplete, that is, they have no subjects.
The paragraph structures, that is, its main idea-topic sentence-supporting ideas-supporting sentences, are generally good. There are some cases, however, in which Apas fails to have some well-constructed paragraphs since some direct speeches are falsely structured.
In terms of its mechanical correctness, that is, its standard grammar, spelling, punctuation, the text written by Apas is generally acceptable, yet in some cases Apas fails to spell some words correctly, to punctuate well, and to use the standard grammar of Manggaraian (i.e. his sentences are not always complete).
Based on the findings discussed above, it is, therefore, suggested that to make his writing in Manggaraian better, Apas improve his ability in the following elements of writing: 1) the art of having details; 2) building up better introductory and concluding paragraphs; 3) building up more complete sentences; 4) having well-structured paragraphs; 5) spelling, punctuation, and standard grammar. Since his weaknesses on those aspects are not necessarily products of his own, particularly when it is related to mechanics of writing, it is also suggested the Government of Indonesia at national and local levels, and linguists interested in the maintenance of Manggaraian, start not only to standardize the spelling, punctuation, and grammar of Manggaraian but also to encourage publications in the language.
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