REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Arabic language has important roles in enriching vocabularies of Indonesian language. It is absorbed into terms of religion, literature, philosophy, law, politics, and science. It creates a huge numbers of loanwords in the language.

The internalization of Arabic into Malay or Indonesian language and the use of Arabic alphabets were long before West colonization era.  The bond of Islam which was the religion of Indonesian majority impacts on a huge number of familiar Arabic vocabularies.

The vocabularies are absorbed into Malay and become lingua franca in Nusantara. Latterly, it becomes the national language of Indonesia. The language absorbance is followed by an internalization of Islamic and state ideas and concepts. 

The 17th century was the beginning of the relations of Islamic religion and science. Significant numbers of manuscripts were written in Arabic language. The main motor was the Javanese. Monumental working on Islamic literature emerged with strong influences of Sharia and Sufism. It was also written in Malay or Javanese Language.

Old workings on Malay literature contained many influences of Islamic religion was stated by Yock Fang as religious or Islamic literature. It was categorized into three types literature works, namely the literary fiction, historical literature, and book literature.

Alif Danya Munsyi, acknowledged as Remy Sylado, wrote an interesting book titled 9 dari 10 Kata Bahasa Indonesia adalah Asing (9 of 10 Indonesian Vocabularies are Foreign). He stated in an article titled 'Arab Bawa Adab’ (Arabs Brings Manners) that the Indonesian indebted to the Arabs in civilization and science.

"For the analogy, if we read a complete Indonesian dictionaries, in every page from A to Z, we will find at least five loanwords taken from Arabic language,” wrote Remy.

Arabic language functions as the language of Quran, ritual language, Islamic culture language, and the language of science. As ritual language it is used in call to prayer, the prayer, and prayer. As a cultural language, the Arabic language is used in expressing traditional and modern arts like songs, literature works, drama and visual art.

In the absorbance of Arabic to Indonesian language, there were some problems due to the different phonemes of both languages. Therefore a transfer of Arabic phonemes into Indonesian is necessary. 

In the book titled Dari Bahasa Melayu sampai Bahasa Indonesia (From Malay to Indonesian Language), UU Hamidy explained that the transfer was started from the era of Melaka Kingdom. The empire was shine after the overcast of Sriwijaya as the cultural center of the west part of Nusantara. Islam was growth under the power of Melaka. 

In Sriwijaya era, people wrote in an Indian alphabetical system called Palawa. The Muslim in Melaka era started using Arabic alphabets as written in the Quran. The Malay phonemes were adapted into Arabic during the era. Some phonemes in Malay were not found in Arabic language system, such as /c/, /ng/, /g/, and /ny/. They symbolized the language sounds with letter ‘kha’, ‘’ain’, ‘kaf’, and ‘nun’ and they add certain point marks.

Kitab Sejarah Melayu (A Book of Malay History) wrote by Tun Seri Lanang in 1612 is an important document recorded the development of the alphabets in Malay and Arabic language. It stated that the Aceh Kingdom was also a lighthouse of the Malay language development. The ulemas from both Aceh and Melaka Kingdom like Hamzah Fansuri, Syamsuddin al-Sumatrani, and Nuruddin ar-Raniri, were contributed into the development of Malay language by their writings. They used Arabic words into their masterpieces.

Recently, the masterpieces became references in formulating Indonesian language. The vocabularies were taken into the language by a certain codification.

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