Cinta Laura

Since many of my friends back home have been talking about Cinta Laura lately, I decided to google the name. I thought it was the title of an Indonesian "sinetron," but it turned that Cinta Laura Kiehl (cinta means love) is a young Indonesian artist and singer. Thanks to Wikipedia and YouTube, I learned that Cinta was born in Germany. Her father is a German hotelier and her mother is an Indonesian lawyer. She has been moving a lot and living in some different countries during her childhood (maybe because of her father's job?). She is famous particularly for the way she speaks, mixing English and Indonesian words as well as mixing the English and Indonesian accents.

This is a clip in which Cinta is speaking about how she likes making friends with people from different cultures:



Many people respond negatively to the way she mixes the two languages when speaking. They say she fakes her English accent, that she is a bad example for other Indonesian children and teenagers because then they will start speaking like her, confusing the two languages,that she does that simply because she wants to be a trend-setter(and in the end, bring in more contracts, and.. more money).

Actually, Cinta Laura reminds me of my experience when I first got in the US. There was an Indonesian family here that has two teen-age girls. When I talked with them in bahasa Indonesia, they answered me in English. I was annoyed and thought, "Gee, these girls were just so 'westernized' that they did not want to speak bahasa Indonesia anymore!" I mean, they were born in Indonesia, their parents spoke bahasa to each other and to them at home. What was wrong with these girls?

When we became better acquainted, I understood that they faced a bigger challenge than I ever thought. They had to use English in school. They had to speak English to their friends and teachers. The only people speaking bahasa Indonesia were just their parents (and other Indonesians who went to their home sometimes). It was a demand that they speak English fluently, and I could see that they very easily picked up their English to the level of native speakers: thinking (not just speaking) in English - and probably dreaming in English. Through them, I could see how they were trying to speak bahasa Indonesia, but it was just like me speaking English. They knew a lot of words, they were able to make sentences, but they did not think in bahasa Indonesia. I learned that speaking a language was not just a matter of bluntly speaking it, but a result of putting a self in a culture, in a context, and in a relationship.

So, I think Cinta Laura is not as simple as faking accents and mixing languages. Deeper than that, the issue involves the process of identity creation, maintenance, and change inside a person. This process happens through relationships with certain people in a certain place at a certain time - which put together, pushing, pulling, and molding that person to do what he/she does.

But... there is one other thing that made me curious: many children and teenagers from China who live(or stay) here in this town can speak both Chinese and English fluently. Hmmm.....

This is 1 pm, so I'll just leave you with this "sweet" song ;) ;)