Pangkalpinang The Language Office of Bangka Belitung Islands Province has proposed 250 local words of Belitung Island to be included in the Great Indonesian Language Dictionary (KBBI) and recognized as official state words.”Colleagues from the vocabulary team at the Language Office of Babel have proposed 250 words of Belitung origin to be included in the KBBI. This is a good effort to enrich vocabulary in the KBBI,” Head of Babel’s Language Office, Muhammad Irsan, stated in Pangkalpinang, Friday.

Irsan said that a plethora of words from regional languages have been included in the KBBI and are quite popular in daily communication among members of society.

Irsan cited words from Java Island and South Sumatra as examples, such as the Javanese word santai as the synonym for the word rileks, or relax, which was proposed by a Javanese journalist; and the word mantan as the synonym for the word bekas, or former or ex, which was suggested by a teacher from South Sumatra.

“These words have become fairly popular and are often used in daily conversations. In the future, we hope that there will be a lot more local words from Babel to be included in the KBBI, so they can be used in both verbal and written communication in daily life,” he pointed out.

To that end, in this year, the province’s language office has proposed the inclusion of a total of 250 Belitung local words in the KBBI in the efforts to boost the number of official words of regional languages’ origin.

Prior to the proposal, the 250 words were subject to an assessment process according to inputs from the KBBI Team. Thereafter, the words were deliberated in the regional language vocabulary hearing session.

“As of today, there are only 35 Bangka words included in the KBBI. Hopefully, the proposal of the 250 Belitung words will be approved, so the local residents can be more proud of their regional languages,” Irsan concluded.

Source: Antara News Agency