Sundanese is a local language spoken by around 40 million people in Indonesia, making it the second-largest local language in the country after Javanese. As mentioned, the number of Sundanese speakers has been declining in recent years, partly due to the influence of the Indonesian language and the complexity of Sundanese itself. One of its unique features is the system of undak usuk basa (speech levels), which determines how one speaks to elders, peers, or younger people. This complexity is one of the reasons why many Sundanese youth are abandoning their language.
The Sundanese Wiktionary can serve as a written evidence that a language was once alive and used. Sundanese Wiktionary is a digital dictionary within a Wikimedia Indonesia project that can be used to find the meaning of Sundanese words. However, the existing entries do not include pronunciation instructions. In response to this problem, an online Sundanese dictionary with audio is available as a response, allowing people to easily find the meaning and pronunciation of Sundanese words listed in Sundanese Wiktionary.
Eventually, in November-December 2022, the Wikimedia Bandung Community carried out a project called WikiSora, an initiative to document the voices of native Sundanese speakers. I, along with Lany pirna and Raflinoer32, were members of this project. This project had two outcomes, uploading the audios on Wikimedia Commons and embeding them on Sundanese Wikitionary.
The goal of WikiSora was to record how native speakers pronounce Sundanese words, thereby contributing to the preservation of the language at a time when younger generations are becoming less aware of its importance. The project name WikiSora comes from the Sundanese word sora, which means “voice.”. Hopefully, with this documentation, younger generations wouldn’t forget their language.
Through the project, we recorded 603 words using Lingua Libre and uploaded them to Wikimedia Commons. Each member contributed at least 200 recorded words. We also linked these recordings to existing lemmas on the Sundanese Wiktionary, for example, bahas, hapit, and keukeup.
We found Lingua Libre to be extremely helpful, serving as a “shortcut” for our work. Without it, recording and uploading audio manually would have been far more complicated and time-consuming. We hope that Lingua Libre will be used more widely, especially for preserving endangered languages around the world.
Additionally, this project can initiate reserving more local languages in Indonesia and the world through Lingua Libre, Wikimedia Commons, and Wiktionary. These Wiki projects could effectively useful as a media to keep a language alive.
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