THE MAINTENANCE OF MINANG LANGUAGE BY MINANG’S FAMILY IN KOTAMATSUM II MEDAN

The objectives of this qualitative research were (1) to identify the factors that affect the maintenance of Minang language (ML) in Kotamatsum II Medan, (2) to discover the parents’ efforts in maintaining ML in Kotamatsum II Medan and (3) to find out the reason why the speakers have to maintain ML. The population is the Minang’s people in Kotamatsum II Medan. The sample was 10 families including 10 parents and their children. The research sees to investigate the language maintenance both parents and children by Minang’s families in Kotamatsum II Medan. After distributing questionnaire and did some interviews it is found that Minang’s families in Kotamatsum II Medan especially for the third generation (children) had the danger level in ML when they communicated to each other. Meanwhile, the data analysis also showed that both fathers and mothers communicated to each other with ML but when they communicated to their children sometimes they mixed between Indonesia and Minang Language. This condition occurred because of the influence of the environment.


INTRODUCTION
60. MELT Journal, Vol 2, Issue 1, June 2017ISSN:2528 This theory used in analyzing this study is based on Holmes who describes that language shift influences the young generation which is stayed in multilingual culture. Every young generation which is lived in the big city has the shifting of language because of the situation. Thus, language maintenance is important, like Holmes (2001: 63) says that language is an identity, and it is more important to be maintained. In addition, Corson (2001: 74) explains that maintenance one language is vital for the self identity. When the vernacular language does not maintain, it can be loss in the next generation. Language maintenance is very vital especially for the young generation who stays in big cities with many cultures around them. There are some factors which is support language maintenance. From the situation, the role of parents is very important in maintaining a language, then another factors can support it because of the parents' role.
When a community does not maintain its language but gradually adopt another one, this is known as a language shift (Hoffman, 1990: 186). While language maintenance refers to a situation where members of a community which tries to keep the language they have always used. The important factors that impact on shift and maintenance of language is attitude (Gardner, 1985, Holmes andHarlow, 1991). Attitude refers to "a hypothetical construct used to explain the direction and persistence of human behaviour" (Baker, 1992:10). So, it shows the internal thoughts, feelings and tendencies in behaviour across a variety of contexts. The main objective of this study is to investigate whether there is any language shift among Minangkabau people in Medan and, if so, identify what role of attitude played in the shift and maintenance of their language.
It competes to disappear among another vernaculars, Indonesian and English language as the impact of globalization. The researcher discovers that there is a problem that occurs in the Minangkabau ethnic group in Medan in where she saw the children of both parents who came from West Sumatera tends to rarely use the language itself, whether at home or in their own community. This condition was also proceed by Siregar, Isa & Husni (1998) in their research about the case of bilingual community in Medan that explained that the local language is very rarely used it, for example in the personal life such as at home, the function and the role of the local language start to loss.
One of the cities which is the home for Minangkabau ethnic group is Medan, a multiethnic city. Over the past few years, Medan has been transformed from being predominantly bilingual to a dynamic potpourri of multilingual society. One such community with its own well-developed language is Minang Language, whose immigration levels have increased quite significantly in the recent past. In where, based on the observation of the researcher, many of Minang's families especially the third generation (children who were born in Medan) was a level danger because they had been influenced by the environment which is stayed by many ethnic groups and this condition made the shifting of ML happening.
Based on a preliminary observation and in line with the great importance growing of the preserving the existence and development of local languages especially to the Indonesian language as the national language, people of Minangkabau ethnic group who stayed in Medan have got problems on their language. And to resolution the problems, it is to find: 1) to identify the factors in maintaining Minang language (ML), 2) to discover the parents' efforts to maintain ML in Medan and 3) to find out the reasons why the speakers have to maintain the ML.

Role and Function of the Indonesian and Vernacular Languages in the Indonesian Society
The Indonesian society is the society which uses two or more languages. Based on the role and function of the vernacular language which have important intention in the political of national language that cause the disappearance of this foreign language. That happened in many ways which according to through the inventarization and some language researches conducted in that area (Ayub, Chan, Rasyad, Rostam, Djamil & Djamaris, 1993: 2).

Role of the Indonesian and Vernacular Languages in the Indonesian Society
Indonesian language is the same with other languages in the world and the changes are due to the development of the speakers' culture. Those changes sometimes cause the influence which comes from the inside and outside of the environment. From the inside, the vernacular language uses at home and Indonesian language uses in outside. From the outside, the foreign language is likely there to change the aim of the national culture. It should be remembered that it is more important to try and develop the vernacular language beside the Indonesian language as the national language. The government (in this case the Department of Education and Culture) should give more attention to the development of the vernacular language.
The role of the Indonesian and vernacular languages in this case the Minangkabau language cannot be separated because it is related to the identity of a country and develop to keep the local culture as parts of the national culture. The key points for their roles are in order that the language can be maintained, it needs to be passed on to and acquired by, each successive generation. Because Indonesian and vernacular languages are tied not only in communication with the family but also the cultural identity as well, namely parents who decide to teach their mother tongue to their children. The Indonesian language should be taught or vernacular language or both accordingly.

Function of the Indonesian and Vernacular Languages in the Indonesian Society
Language and language use include human activities as a whole. The language has the scientific function although nonscientific in the daily life in general. The language is also on the process of shifting. This shifting is caused by the influence or the effect between the language itself and the dynamic people, between the language and the national mobility. The interaction in a small group of language follows the role of the bigger group in a language, the using of language in general, the judgement to a language, the divergence on a language, the varieties of language as regional, social, ethnic and functional, religion and construct also political sociolinguistics which is interesting (Supriyanto & Rustamadji, 1986: 1).
Medan as a capital city of North Sumatera province is the home of many ethnics cultures and languages. Despite the varieties of cultures and languages, the Indonesian language is always used as a tool of communication in the inter ethnic group and vernacular language has many roles and functions in the Indonesian society. According to Gunarwan (2000: 63) the function of the vernacular language is in the inside tribes, but not the inter tribes. It means that in the level of local area, vernacular language has the unite function to the member of the tribes and also it separates the tribes from another tribes which use other vernacular languages. Kridalaksana (1980) asserts that Indonesian language can develop together proportionally with other vernacular languages. Although the competition between Indonesian language and vernacular language can be avoided, in another words Indonesian language and vernacular language have their own position.
It can be concluded that Indonesian language has the functions as the national language and Minangkabau language as the vernacular language. The implication is that both languages are accepted by the Indonesian people as the two languages which can be together and use in their life.

Language Endangerment
Language endangerment is referred to a level of a risk or failing to use language. A language is in danger when its speakers stop using it, use it in an increasingly reduced number of communicative domains and stops to pass it on from one generation to the next. i.e., there are no new speakers, either adult or children. Language endangerment may be the result of external forces such as military, economic, religious or educational discrimination, or it might be caused by the internal forces such as a community's negative attitude towards its own language. Internal pressures often have their source in external ones, both had the inter-generational transmission of linguistic and cultural traditions.
There are many phases of proposed by the ethnologist, Crystal (2001: 20) elaborates three criteria namely: safe, endangerment or extinct language. In addition Grenoble & Whaley (2006: 18) categorize six way schemes as requiring with respect to language endangerment they are, safe, at risk, disappear, moribund, nearly extinct and extinct.
A language is potentially endangered if the children start preferring the dominant language and learn the modern language imperfectly. It is endangered if the young speakers are young adults there are no or very few children speakers. It is seriously endangered if the youngest speakers are in the middle-aged or past middle age. It is terminally endangered if there are only a few elderly speakers left. A language is dead when there are no speakers left at all.
There are six levels of endanger: 1. Safe At the highest criteria, a language will be categorized as "safe" when all the generation use language in all domains. It has a large speaker based on relative to other spoken in the same region, therefore, typically the functions are as the language of government, education and commerce. Many safe languages enjoy with the official status within notion-statues, and such as tend to be held in higher prestige than other languages.

At risk
Language is at risk when it is vital without any observable pattern of shrinking risk speaker base, but it lacks some of the properties of a safe language.

Disappeared
A language disappears is an observable shift towards another language in the communities where it is spoken. With an overall decreasing proportion of intergenerational transfer, the speaker base shrinks because it is not being replenished. The language disappears because are consequently it is used in a more restricted set of domains, and a language of wider communication begins to replace it in greater percentage of homes.

Moribund
A moribund language is the language which is no longer being learned as a mother tongue by the children.

Nearly Extinct
Nearly extinct language is a language that can be considered as almost extinct when only a handful of speakers of the oldest generation remain.

Extinct Language
Extinct language will happen if the language is with no remaining speakers. If it is happened, language endangerment can be reversed back if the children are encouraged to relearn the language with the help of the surviving speakers in a casual

Language Shift
Language shift is a shifting of vernacular language which happens in multicultural society. Holmes, 2001 states that Language shift is the replacement of one language by another as the primary means of communication and socialization within a community. Meanwhile, language maintenance refers to the situation whereby a language (often a transplanted minority language) is retained and used by speakers alongside, or instead of, a more dominant language (Llamas, Mullany & Stocwell, 2007: 219). In addition it describes the situation where the speech communities cannot use their language despite competition from the locally and globally dominant languages. Furthermore, Nettle & Romaine (2000: 49) assert that this shift is unavoidable when two languages compete using in the same domains.
One of the most common definitions of language shift is that it takes place when the young members of a minority speech community no longer speak the language of their parents, but speak a dominant majority language instead. The language of the parents is therefore not passed on the next generation. Many factors affect language maintenance, for example whether or not it is used in media, for religious purposes, in education, how many speakers of the language live in the same area.
Language shift usually occurs in bilingualism and multilingualism community. Fishman (1991: 1) asserts that language shift typically occurs in speech communities whose native languages are threatened because their intergenerational continuity is proceeding negatively, with fewer users every generation. It is obviously that the language shift can be seen by the less of users of the native language and it becomes less in the next generation.
Thus, language shift is a process which a minority language in a certain community replaces or shifts to a dominant language. It is important to find a way in maintaining a language from the shifting.

Language Maintenance
Language maintenance is generally described as a three-generation process. That is the first generation learns as much another language (Indonesian language) as it can but speaks the mother tongue at home; the second generation may speak the mother tongue at home but shifts to unaccented Indonesian language at school and in the workplace; by the third generation, English becomes the home language, and effective knowledge of the heritage language disappears.
Many languages that are spoken by the Indonesian people will show that the country is colorful in term of language used. According to Siregar et al. (1998) description about language maintenance and language shift is usually towards the relationship between the changing of what usually happen in a language with the psychological process, social and cultural in which continue when the society speaks in different connection to each other. Language maintenance is the specific characteristic bilingual or multilingual language which maintain the using some languages to differentiate function in the different form.
Apple & Muysken (2006: 36) mention that language maintenance and language shift can be linked to a number of factors, including urban-rural differences, as well as the economic changes. They explain that it is easier for rural communities than speaking and maintaining the minority language, especially if the community belongs to the same linguistic group. On the contrary, it is more difficult for urban people to speak a minority language.
Furthermore, Kaplan & Baldauf (1997: 77) point out that when community language is threatened with extinction, there is an obvious need for language maintenance. Siregar's et al, observation (1998) about language maintenance and language attitude in the case of bilingualism society in Medan conclude that in some ethnic groups like Chinese and Karonese show that the pattern of high maintaining a language is in the house. Some of the other ethnics like Angkola/ Mandailing and Malay are happen the language shift pattern happens from the bilingual speakers to the Indonesian speakers.
Based on the definitions above, it can be summarized that language maintenance is an effort of a minority group to keep using or maintaining their language in a multicultural circumstance. It means that how it is very important to keep the existence of a language.

Minangkabau Language
Minangkabau language is one of the big ten vernaculars alive and develops in Indonesia (Ayub et al, 1993: 13). In the territory of West Sumatera province, Minangkabau language is the first language or mother tongue. Besides that, it is a tool of communication between the members of family and the society and also the tools to support the culture. In other words Minangkabau language is as the vernacular with the functions as: (1) the icon of West Sumatera province and to support the development of the culture of Minangkabau, (2) the identity of West Sumatera province and Minangkabau society is as one of the tribes in Indonesia and (3) the tools of connection to the family and the society in communication with inter ethnic in West Sumatera.
The Minangkabau society has a diglossia situation, whereby they use their native language for every conversation, while the Indonesian language is used to the most formal occasion, in education, and in writing, even to relatives and friends. The Minangkabau language was originally written using Jawi script, and adopted Arabic alphabet. Romanization of the language dates from the 19 th Century, and a standardized official orthography of the language was published in 1976.
In Medan, especially people in Kota Matsum II Medan, make their community base on their tribes. The Minangkabau people make a community to maintain their existence. Usually, their community always has a meeting every month and in the meeting, they always use Minangkabau language. Thus, it can be concluded that the function of Minangkabau language is in another words to feel the closeness and respectful, more to express feelings, private speaking, and easier to speak with others. Because of that, it is important to maintain and preserve the language and culture of Minangkabau.
Here are some of the Minangkabau Language which is used by Minang's People in daily life. This study was designed based on descriptive qualitative. The purpose of qualitative research varies according to the research paradigm, methods, and assumption. Qualitative researchers seek illumination, understanding and extrapolation to similar situation (Hoepfl, 1997). Ary, Jacob & Razaviah (1979: 295) state that descriptive research studies are designed to obtain the information concerning the current status of phenomena.
The subjects were the Minangkabau people who have lived in Medan and they were permanent residents and they were born or they moved from their hometown. The subjects were selected purposively in order to provide high quality data to the researcher, due to the needs of high quality responses. The main research of the people is the Minang's families in Kotamatsum II Medan.
There were ten families from the second generation namely parents from the ages of 40 until 60 and the third generation namely children from the ages of 15 until 30. The reason why both of them were chosen because they were considered as the central of the culture and responsible for the maintenance of the tradition and language. Another reason for categorizing the sample into two groups was to compare the changing attitudes of these two groups towards language maintenance in the community.
The data were obtained by: giving questionnaire and conducting interview. The researcher divided the subject into two groups. They were parents group (second generation) and children group (third generation). The researcher gave the questionnaire to both who were related to the factors in maintaining the Minang language (ML).
The questionnaire was assigned to get the data of parents' influenced in using ML in their daily life activities and how the children acquire the language. The interview was intended to get in-depth information on the shift of ML. After conducting the questionnaire to the subject, interview was applied to explore their reason to answer such question.
Data analysis is a process whereby researchers systematically searched and arrange their data in order to increase their understanding of the data and present them to others. Miles & Huberman (1984: 21) point out that there are some steps to be conducted as follows, 1) Data Reduction, 2) Data Display, 3) Verification and Conclusion.
The list of the questions had been arranged as the source of the interview. The writer had been the test that questions and get the result from the subjects. The lists of the questions were divided into 1. The age of the subjects 2. The level of the subjects' education 3. The mobility of the subjects 4. The place of birth of the subjects and To decide the level of both parents (second generation) and children (third generation) roles in language maintenance which was calculated by the following formula (Hatch & Farhady, 1982: 43) x P =_________ x 100 %  x in which: P : percentage x : number of instrumental responses  x : total number of responses To decide the level of Parents (Second) Generation and Children (Third Generation Roles in ML Maintenance, then the writer applied the following criteria

DATA ANALYSIS
This thesis described the factors affecting the Minang's family to maintain the Minang language (ML) in Medan. This research answered the research problems of the level of endangerment that happened to ML itself. The subjects were 10 Minang families who were in the Second Generation (parents who moved from their hometown to Medan) and Third Generation (children who were born in Medan). The data were taken from the questionnaire and interview.

Factors Affecting the maintenance of Minang Language (ML)
There were four factors observed in the maintenance of ML in Medan, namely, (1) the role of parents, (2) the role of family, (3) the intramarriage and (4) homeland visits. The questionnaire was given to the parents and children from the Minang's families in Kotamatsum II Medan. The interview supports the questionnaire which had been done by the researcher.

The Role of Parents in Minangkabau Language (ML) Maintenance
The parents play important roles for children to maintain their language. The first language that they heard is spoken by their parents. The data revealed from 10 parents (10 fathers and 10 mothers), all of them is able and fluently in communicating with ML. Based on the data above, it was found that when husband and wife spoke to each other they always communicated in ML. But, when they spoke to their children, they made the difference ways of communication to their children, about 85% used it to communicate to their children. Based on the in-depth interview, there are some problems which happened, "Saya selalu berbahasa Minang ke anak-anak, tapi entah kenapa anak-anak susah untuk berbahasa Minang dengan lancar. Kalau saya perhatikan hal itu disebabkan lingkungan tempat tinggal saya yang terdiri dari berbagai suku".
"I always communicate ML to my children. But, I do not know why my children difficult to ML fluently. If I see, it is happened because of the environment that I live which is depended on vary ethnic groups." There are internal and external factors affected such a situation. The internal factors is that there is a tendency that parents do not care of maintaining of ML by transmitting it to their children while the external one is affected by the domination of Bahasa Indonesia in daily use of language ranging from the outside home.
In fact, parents have a study role in children acquisition, even it is stated that the basic level of the language maintenance is family domain. When it is no longer used in the family domain, the language will be categorized as a dead language

The Role of Family in Minangkabau Language (ML) Maintenance
In a family, children not only speak to their parents but also to other members in their family. Based on the data, when children spoke to their parents, brothers and sisters also other families, all of them did not speak fluently in ML. Based on the table, it shows 42.5% of their ability in communication by using ML. This happened because most of the children mix their languages between Indonesian and ML when they communicate to their parents. Even they speak Indonesian to their parents because their ML was poor. To communicate to one another between them, they tended to more use Indonesian language than ML, only some children use 25% of it.
Meanwhile when they communicate to their relatives, their ability to communicate to their relatives was 40%. And usually they mixed the two languages, even they used Indonesian language when they spoke to their relative. This happened because of the environment which influenced them. Actually, they understood the ML when their parents spoke it. Because their community was heterogenic, they could not be usual to speak it. Meanwhile, to their parents they seldom spoke it because they are not always at home.
The members of the families believe by the ML in their daily conversation make the children accustomed and fluently to use it. But the fact that she found when she observed, it happened, even though the parents always used it at home, but the fact said different. The children seldom used ML, they tended to the Indonesian language than ML. Because of that, the other members of family tended to the Indonesian language too when they met the children. They believed that the children were not fluent or understand what they said when they use ML.

The Intramarriage
The results of the data collection showed that from 10 parents who communicated with ML, all of them were pure Minangkabau ethnic group. And the children were the same too. Based on the data from the questionnaire, automatically, the parents always used and communicate with use it. The children always heard when the father and the mother spoke using ML and actually their children understood when their parents spoke with use their vernacular language. This factor could affect their language acquisition toward their vernacular language.
But the problem was when they practised it, they found difficulty to use it. It happened because they spent more time outside their home with use Indonesian language. The in-depth interview showed that the use of Indonesian language was usually used by the children in every situation when they were in outside their home.

Homeland Visits
One of the social activities in maintaining a language is homeland visits regularity. Homeland visits here means Minang's people in outside of West Sumatera went to see their homeland, did language contact with the people in their homeland. These activities actually could build the sense of belongings to the culture. Based on the questionnaire that had been distributed to the subjects, it could be seen from the table that the results of the data were 52.5% parents answered that they usually visited their homeland regularly and 37.5% children's visit their homeland. It happened because some of them had a financial problem, so they sometimes visited their homeland regularly.

Findings
Based on the analysis, the research is formulated as in the following, there are four factors affecting the maintenance of Minang language (ML) by Minang's families in Kotamatsum II Medan. They are the role of parents, the role of family, the intramarriage and homeland visit.
The interaction between the four factors are needed in order to make the language maintenance can be corrected out effectively.
1. The role of parents in practising ML at home seems to have an influence to the Minang's children on ML acquisition and maintenance. However, parents are not active to push their children in communicating with it. And let their children communicate to each other with using Indonesian language. 2. Communication between children themselves and another family should have been affected to maintain ML, but it does not affect because from the basic that is the parents' role let their children communicate with Indonesian language to them. Thus it influences their children to communicate with Indonesian language to themselves and to their other relatives. 3. All parents are pure Minangkabau's ethnic group. These are the strongest causes for them to maintain ML. Because their parents directly communicate with it in daily life. And it can give the affecting for their ML acquisition. But their children find difficulty in practising directly in daily life because of the influence of the environment. 4. Visiting the homeland can't help much because they rarely visited their hometown because of the financial problem.

Discussions
Language in this case the ethnic language needs to be maintained, because it creates the uniqueness of Indonesia. There are some vernaculars in Indonesia that has endangered to the young generation; one of them is Minang language (ML). Based on the problems of the research, theoretical review and findings, the following discussion elaborates the objectives of this research.
After analyzing the data to ML of Minang's families in Kotamatsum II Medan especially for the third generation (children) is categorized as unsafe language. The language is being used by some children in limited domains in this case is ML. The findings from this study through questionnaires on the second and third generations of IWS showed that only the second generation which always used ML in every situation and in daily life, meanwhile the third generation sometimes use it and do not use it. In such situation the use of ML in IWS categorized as at risk, because the active and native in ML is the second generation (parents). It occurred because the second generation came from their hometown which ML as the mother tongue and since young they use it, and they move to Medan when they are adult and bring their style to communicate in ML in their new environment.
After doing this research on the factors in the maintenance of ML by Minang's families in Kotamatsum II Medan, there are four factors found namely the role of parents, the language use of the family, the intramarriage and visiting homeland. After analyzing the data and the results, the intramarriage had the biggest influence in maintaining the ML for the children, because with the same culture of the fathers and mothers, they communicate with ML and they can communicate with ML to their children.
But in reality, many children can't speak ML fluently even though they understand when their parents communicate with it. The children get a little difficulty to communicate back to their parents and inclined mixing both Indonesian language and ML and even use only Indonesian language when they communicate with their parents. It happened because their parents just speak the language but do not correct when their children do not use ML, so their children are been usual to communicate the language. It happened because the parents' role to maintain ML does not give the effect for their children. And also it because the children were more comfortable to use Indonesian language or any major languages that use in society. It continuously happens since they are young until adults. And also the influence of the environment they live was given the biggest affecting the language shift.
Based on the findings, although the parents' roles and the intramarriage gave the biggest affect in ML maintenance, but both of the factors do not help much for the children, because they are not aware of the children and let the children use Indonesian language. If this happens continuously, by the time, it will exist. And from this situation, it also can be seen that generally ML of the third generation of Minang's families is failed effort to maintain.
Thus, there are some reasons why ML has to be maintained. The first think that Minang's people assume is the matrilineal. Minangkabau ethnic group is a unique ethnic group, in where the family's name is descended by the mother. The other reason is words of ML not very far from Indonesian language, so other ethnic group sometimes understands ML although a little. Such as "kemana" in Indonesia, in ML "ka ma". There is not so difficult. And if we heard the words "jalang" in Indonesia, we mean the connotative meaning. But in ML, the translation is "encer".
The uniqueness of ML makes ML has to be maintained. And it makes the Minang's people proud about their vernacular. The other reason why they have to maintain ML is that they realize that the language is the symbol of identity, as they do not want to lose their identity.