Preserving Javanese Culture by Junior Highschool Students in Northern Semarang District as Javanese Language Environment to Promote Local Tourism Industry

Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Diponegoro University, Semarang - Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: wiekku@yahoo.com

Abstract

Culture is system of idea and act as a result of human creation. A culture becomes history when their community leave it. A language, as part of culture, becomes dead when a speech community leave it. Preserving culture and language is important to keep our identity and civilization. This research shows how Javanese speech community keep their use of Javanese to maintain their culture in Northern Semarang as Javanese environment by taking the data from Junior Highschool students. The result shows that most of them still maintain Javanese, especially the lowest level of Javanese (Ngoko) to talk to their friend in casual situation. Few of them understand the highest level of Javanese (Krama) to honor the older. They are also able to write and read Javanese letters since it is taught as a school subject with local content. Javanese language and culture maintenance is supported by the local government to promote Semarang tourism industry to gain more benefit for the local people and the local government. Preserving culture by maintaining the language must be supported by the environment by using it in daily conversation and teaching it in school to make the young generation understand and use the language.