BAHASA-BAHASA LOKAL DI INDONESIA: JATI DIRI DAN SUMBER DAYA YANG LAYAK DIPERTAHANKAN DAN DILESTARIKAN

Local languages in Indonesia are older than Indonesian as national and state language even foreign languages. As part of Austronesian and Non-Austronesian language, each local language in this country has its own ethnicity characteristics in which culture and traditions are strongly involved. On the other side, local languages also include culture and local tradition that are the pillars of multicultural of Indonesian society. In the perspective of ecolinguistics and cultural linguistics, the local languages are rich of meaning and life values as well as the sources of culture community, thus local languages must be maintained, cultivated, and preserved. The efforts of maintaining the endangered languages have to become high priority. The most important strategic steps in being aware of ethnic identity as Indonesian nation and state, learning and its use for the sake of local languages active function as mother tongue in developing Indonesian multilingual and multicultural society. Keywords: local language, sources, maintenance, preservatio