Always said so many times, Indonesia is the only one country of you looking for the culture and arts that crarfter and made uniquely by its people. For examples, there are some regions that have their own unique culture. There are the Javanese, Papuanese, Betawi culture, and many more waiting to discover.
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For this article, we want to pick the topic about the first one, the Javanese culture. The Javanese culture is known for its calm, elegant, and peaceful form of a culture. You can the reflection from its dances, arts, and also the famous Keraton Yogyakarta that locatd around Yogyakarta city. But, what about its facts? To learn about its facts, we want to introduce to you the 30 in total, facts about the Javanese culture. You can see them exactly below :
1. Javanese Language
Especially in some regions inside the two provinces, the Central Java and also East Java, use the traditional language of Javanese to speak everyday. Usually the people use the Javanese language in daily activities like talking with neighbors and friends.
It’s more simple than the national language of Indonesia, and also the Javanese language has someslangs that used and can be understand by Javanese people only. But, for the education, the people always use the Bahasa Indonesia in school or university. Talking with Javanese language to some teachers or professors are considered as non polite.
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2. Ngoko Language
The Javanese language actually has three branches. First, the Ngoko language, and then the Kromo language, and the last is the Krama Inggil. For the first one, this is like the common language that always used in the big cities around Central and East Java province ike Surabaya dan Malang city.
But, the usage of Ngoko is only for talking to the people with the same age only, or for the non formal communication. It’s a wrong thing, and considered as a rude act if you talking to some elderly people using the Ngoko Language. If yu don’t understand about the Kromo, you better use Bahasa Indonesia when talking to them.
3. Kromo Language
The next level after the Ngoko language is the Kromo Language. This is a more polite language than the actual Ngoko language. If you talking to some one older than you, you can always use the Kromo language, not the Kromo Inggil.
The oher form of Javanese language is the Kromo Inggil, that used to talk to someone well respected or old. You can also find the usage of this language in certain areas around Keratons It’s actually easy to understand the language if you can do a proper training.
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4. Religions
In Java island, you can find many people with different religions, for example there are Islam, Christian, Buddha, Hindhu, and Confuchianism. But, to the poeple who live in some regions insed the East, Central, or West Java, there’s one old religion called Kejawen.
The Kejawen is still used by the old people around the villages in Java island. For the teenagers, the usually switch to the other religions.
5. Three Arts of Javanese Tribe
Talking about the Javanese tribe arts, there are three kinds of them. There are some famous art branch, those branches are Banyumasan, The art of Central and the last is the art of East Java. If you look closely, you cna notice the different in between. Beside the language, there are other aspects that dfference all the three, like the movement, the musical instruments, and many more.
6. The Javanese Calendar
Inside the Javanese people, there’s this unique calendar that use for deciding certain events. Inside the calendar, yo can find these names of weeks in there, like Pong, Pahing, Wage, Kliwon, and Manis. For the days, they are still the same like you can find inside the ususal calendar that contains Sunday to Monday.
7. Java Coffee
For you coffee lovers, you of course are not to strane with this coffee. The name of the coffee is the Java coffee. The reason is the coffee was created inside the Java island, and the god thing is the coffee has this kind of unique flavr that everyone likes.
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8. The Javanese Writings / Aksara Jawa
The javanese writing is considered as the old way of writing in the Kingdom Era. These days, there’s this Javanese language classes in school when they knowing more about the Javanese literature, including the Aksara Jawa.
9. The Puppets
For the puppets, the Javanese people have this kind of puppet called Wayang Kulit or the leather puppet. The puppetswill be operated by the dalag or pupper master who wil tell the audience the story of Mahabharata o other uniquq stories.
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10. Wetonan
The Wetonan is the forecastign method to determine someones’ future. It’s believe that every person has his/her own character that based on the day they were born. But for now, this belief is slowly gone washed by the modern technology.
11. The Famous Program, “Java”
For the people who love in the 90’s era, of course you have the experience of using the program called Java.The fact about this program is, it was named after the known coffee in Java lands, called Java coffee. After sipping a bit of it, the developers were getting inspired by the name of the coffee.
12. Javanese Language Reached Top 10 on Wikipedia in 2013
The next fact is the Javanese language reached the hughest numbe of language that used by the community. There’s like 84,3 million times Javanese language used in the Wikipedia community.
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13. Because of that, the Javanese language specially included in Google Translate
And having the relation with the fact above, after realizing that the Javanese language is the number one in the top 10 in 2014, the Google translate finllay included that language inside the dictionary.
14. The Calm Character of Javanese People
Well, like always said, the character of the Javanese people is rather calm and peaceful. They even talk in a very calm voice. You can witness the act in the city like Yogyakarta or Solo.
15. Really Love The Sweet Foods
The other interesting fact is, the Javanese people really love the sweet foods. To find the example, you can tase the Gudeg that originally made in cities like Yogykarta, and compare it to the one that made in Jakarta. The Yogyakartan gudeg has more sweet taste.
Like usual, we want to divide the full explanation ones with the shorter list. But, the good news is, the small list contains a number that equal to the long explanations. And from the combination of both, you can get the complete list of 30 facts about Javanese culture.
- Form of dances, starting from The Reog Dance,
- Kuda Lumping Dance,
- Ebeg Dance,
- and Golek Menak Dance
- The Unique Temples, starting from the famous Borobudur Temple,
- Prambanan Temple,
- and also Singosari Temple
- The Intrument of Gamelan
- The Gong, one of the instruments of Gamelan
- The traditional martial art called Silat
- Really focus on high education
- The old ship called Jung Ship
- Some of the remainings kingdom architecture like Keraton Yogyakarta,
- and also Keraton Surakarta
- Last but not least is the famous traditional weapon, Keris
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And that’s the stop. The final 15th fact on the small list above ends our topic for today. Like you can see, there are so many facts for the Javanese culture only. Imagine this, with several cultures in Indonesia, how many facts you can get from them all? Thousands maybe. And because of that fact, it’s a good thing to learn some more about Indonesian culture. Notfor only young children, this information is also important for growing adult, especially the Indonesian.
