Revision of Cause and Effect Essay by Sayu

The Existence of Sundanese Letter

Sunda is known for its cultural diversity. Sundanese Letter or can be called “ngalena” is one of the contents. Sundanese Letter has been used since before the 14^th century. It proved by the Sundanese Letter used in the manuscripts (Parahyangan story, Bujangga Manik, Sewaka Darma) and on the more popular inscriptions (Kebantenan inscription, Kawali inscription). Sundanese Letter was well known by the Sundanese who lived around that century. As time goes by, it has been declared as an original letter which must be protected and it preserved. However, this is modern era in which the people left the old culture and changed to the modern. So that Sundanese Letter has begun to fade slowly. Sundanese themselves were forgot and even unknown about it. So, what caused Sundanese Letter fade? There are three possible causes, those are : globalization, education system, and there is no an obligation to use the Sundanese Letter in daily or social life.

Globalization is a process of expanding influence from one country to another. This phenomenon also called modernization. Globalizatiom through several steps, which begin of international trade, the spread of religion and the transformation of science, industrial and technology development and free market development. Those four steps been being happened in Indonesia. As a result, the people can acces information freely from other countries through print or electronic media.  Actually, the free accessing information itself can have positive and negative impact. The positive side is people will get a lot of information coming from all corners of the world, indirectly the information will increase people's knowledge, but the negative side is most of people left their culture and turn to imitate other culture. It happened with Sundanese Letter. Now, Sundanese are more interesting to study the letter of other country, than Sundanese Letter.

Another possible cause for the fade of Sundanese Letter is education system. As a people who have graduated from Vocational High School in Office Admnistration Department, I got the study about Sundanese Letter in second grade. At that time, I had thought that the Institute of Education had carried out their duties in an effort to develop and preserve Indonesian culture, by adding a local cultural curriculum in which learning about Sundanese Letter. Unfortunately not all schools especially in West Java provide teaching about local culture like Sundanese Letter, so there are still many people do not know about the existence of it. However, a lot of students of senior high school studied Sundanese Letter, but it did  not make them master the Sundanese letter skills. It because they only learn it within six months or a semesters. With such short time is not enough to train and get used to write foreign letter, and it will be hard if it is not often trained.

A third cause for the fade of Sundanese Letter is there is no an obligation to use the Sundanese letter in daily or social life. If we are thorough, some people who can write Sundanese writing cannot guarantee that Sundanese writing still exists without practicing it often in daily or social life. It is like a knife that is rarely sharpened, it will be blunt. Similar to the Sundanese letter, if someone does not use or practice it often, then slowly that person will forget it. Until now, there is no an obligation to use the Sundanese writing in daily or social life. So, The fading of Sundanese Letter culture is not entirely derived from globalization and the education system, because indeed this problem seems to be supported by the absence of media to apply it and there is no necessity to use it. Sunda has many cultures that can be used as a medium for collaborating with Sundanese Letter, for  the example : Sunda has a popular culture, “Sawer”, the text of sawer can be written by Sundanese Lettter. So that, the existence of the Sundanese Letter will not fade.

Everyone will feel sad when they witness one by one the loss of Indonesian culture. therefore we as young people must have an innovation to uplift the culture that has been forgotten. One way is to start re-introducing the types of Sundanese Letter and the local content of the local culture through socialization to all levels of society both bureaucrats and the community, as well as formal and informal institutions. Starting from the ranks of bureaucrats as policy makers, the government should play an active role in the efforts to preserve, develop and foster local culture and the educational institutions have to participate in the process of preservation of regional literacy.The Sundanese Letter must be returned, resurrected. So that our culture is not eroded by the flow of foreign cultures out there. With the ease of obtaining and disseminating information, the Sundanese Letter can easily be introduced to the world audience. Do not let us lose to other languages. Because our language is actually better than the foreign language.