How Balinese English Looks Like

The varieties happen in almost every language and so does English. English is the international language so that English is widely used. Bali is one of the example in which English is used commonly for communication in daily life because of the tourism influent. As one of the tourism object, Bali has lots of tourists from different places in the world. In order to be able to communicative with these foreigners, English is being used commonly.

There are two kinds of English that is used in Bali, the formal English and the informal English. The formal English is the English that is learned from education institute such as school, university, courses. Meanwhile, the informal English is the communicative English in Bali which is learned from the society they live in. Not many people go to education departments to learn about English because they considered English as a hard subject so it is very seldom to find Balinese people who speak formal English. We will find that most of Balinese people are able to speak English but the English that they use is the communicative English. It means that the English that they use is understandable and acceptable; therefore, there will be some differences in Balinese Communicative English.  These differences will be seen in some aspects:

1.      Grammar

In terms of grammar, Balinese Communicative English is not exactly grammatically correct. It happens in some cases:

o       The time situation

In English grammar the time situation influences the sentences (verbs) but in Bali there is no time situation which can influence the sentences so that when Balinese speaks English some of them sometimes ignore the English time situations. For example:

Balinese people; “I go to Sanur yesterday.”

In correct English; “I went to Sanur yesterday.”

o       Word by word direct translation

Balinese people tend to translate every single word directly with the same forms without considering the meaning. For example:

Balinese people; “Bli, Bli, belinin tyang nggih!” (Balinese language)

Balinese people; “Sir, Sir, buy me please!” (Balinese English)

In correct English, “Sir, would you like to buy this?”

o       The use of to be

Balinese people often use to be ‘is’ in sentences. For example:

Balinese people; “She is go to school”

In correct English; “She goes to school”

o       The use of objective pronoun

Some people can not differentiate the use of objective pronoun. For example:

Balinese people; “I know she”

In correct English; “I know her”

2.      Intonation

Some people say the sentences in different ways with the native speakers. It is influenced by the dialects of the people. So when they speak in English they will say it with their own dialects intonation which shows their origin.

3.      Pronunciation

Balinese people have some difficulty to pronounce some words in English such as the words that consist of ch, th, sh, etc because in Balinese vocabularies we don’t have those. Examples: this, cash, check, etc.