Many years ago, I used to check out one particular book from my local library that piqued my interest. It was a compilation of small articles taken from various world languages, some of them with very exotic (and sometimes beautiful) scripts. Some of these languages were in the highly populated island nation of Indonesian. In particular, I remember two languages: Javanese and Sundanese. Both of these languages are spoken on Indonesia's very densely populated island of Java, with the former comprising the predominant ethno-linguistic group there. The Sunda people are concentrated on the western end of the island while there are Madurese on the far eastern side. Today, however, in spite of the lovely traditional scripts, both Sundanese and Javanese are written using Romanized script: check out Wikipedia to see for yourself. Sundanese strikes me at a glance to be similar to Indonesian, that country's official language.
The Sundanese are a primarily agricultural society that, like most of the rest of Indonesia, practices Islam with a strong traditional culture which predates that religion for millennia. They have their own creation story and many orally-passed-on stories that speak of a culture that is ancient and profound. I am interested in learning more about their culture as well as listening to some of their more traditional music.
More to come...
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