🇮🇩Sundanese for English speakers

1. Sundanese and its world

Sundanese — Basa Sunda — is the language of the western third of Java, spoken by roughly 32 million people, about 15% of Indonesia's population.¹ That makes it the second-largest language of Indonesia after Javanese, and one of the largest languages in the world that most English speakers have never heard of. Glottolog codes it sund1252, ISO 639-3 sun.²

Its home is Tatar Sunda or Pasundan — West Java and Banten, plus the western edge of Central Java in Brebes and Cilacap, where place names like Dayeuhluhur, Cimanggu and Cipari still mark the reach of the old Galuh kingdom.¹ Transmigration has carried Sundanese to Lampung, South Sumatra, Bengkulu, Riau, West Kalimantan and Southeast Sulawesi, and there are diaspora communities well beyond Indonesia.

Sundanese is not a dialect of Javanese, and the distinction matters to Sundanese speakers. Robert Blust argues that Sundanese is closely related to the Malayic languages and to language groups of Borneo such as Land Dayak and Kayan–Murik, on the strength of lexical similarities — a rather different family position from Javanese.³ The two languages share an areal profile and a register system, not a recent common ancestor.

It also has one of the longest documented histories in the archipelago. Until about 1600 CE Sundanese was the state language of the kingdoms of Salakanagara, Tarumanagara, Sunda, Galuh, Pajajaran and Sumedang Larang, absorbing heavy Sanskrit influence in the process. Religious and didactic works of that period — the Sanghyang Siksa Kandang Karesian, Carita Parahyangan, Amanat Galunggung, Guru Talapakan — survive in Old Sundanese script.¹

Why learn Sundanese as an English speaker

• Bandung, Bogor, Sukabumi, Garut and Tasikmalaya are Sundanese-speaking cities of millions, and Indonesian will only take you to the surface of them.
• The register system is a beautiful piece of grammar and a genuine window into how Sundanese people think about relationship and respect.
• The grammar is friendly: no tense inflection, no gender, no case, no verb agreement. The plural is an infix, which is unusual and rather fun.
• It is comparatively under-served. Good learner material in English is thin, which makes every step forward count for more.

What to expect from this guide

This guide teaches basa loma, the neutral-familiar register that also serves as the written standard, in the Priangan dialect that is taught in West Java's schools, and it teaches the polite lemes forms alongside it from the very first page — because in Sundanese you cannot say anything at all without choosing a level. The spelling is the current EBS standard, in force since 1988.¹

2. Sounds and spelling

Sundanese has seven vowels, and two of them are the reason Sundanese written in Latin letters looks unfamiliar at first glance.¹⁴

The seven Sundanese vowels

eu is the sound to work on. It is a high central unrounded vowel, made with the tongue high and the lips spread — not the /ɜː/ of English burn, and not a diphthong despite the two letters. Realisations vary: younger speakers may produce it as back [ɯ], close-mid [ɘ], or [ɤ]; it is [ɤ] in Bandung and [ɯ] in Tangerang, while Indonesian speakers handling Sundanese loanwords and names tend to say [ɘ], as in keukeuh /kɘkɘh/ and the place name Pameungpeuk /pamɘŋpɘʔ/.¹ Words like seuneu ‘fire’, beureum ‘red’ and euweuh ‘there isn't any’ are unpronounceable without it.

The other trap is é versus e. The acute is not optional decoration: é is /ɛ/ and bare e is schwa. Writing heJo for héjo changes the word. This guide and its deck follow the 1988 EBS spelling, which marks the distinction consistently.¹

Müller-Gotama counts 18 consonants: /b t͜ɕ d ɡ h dʑ k l m n p r s ŋ t ɲ w j/, written p, b, t, d, k, g, c, j, h, ng, ny, m, n, s, w, l, r, y.⁴ Note that c is /t͡ɕ/ (like English ch) and j is /d͡ʑ/. Loanwords have introduced /f~v/, /q/ and /z/ — fonem, qur'an, zakat — but the older pattern nativises them: f/v → p, sy → s, z → j initially and s finally, kh → h.¹

One small automatic rule: a semivowel /w/ or /j/ is inserted after a high vowel that is immediately followed by another vowel. So kuéh is /kuwɛh/, muih is /muwih/, béar is /bejar/, miang is /mijaŋ/, euweuh is /ɜwɜh/.¹ You do not have to do anything about this — it happens by itself if you pronounce the vowels properly — but it explains why those words sound as they do.

3. Sampurasun, and the register problem on day one

The traditional Sundanese greeting is Sampurasun, and it has a fixed reply: Rampés. You will hear it opening speeches, ceremonies and radio programmes. In ordinary conversation the wilujeng series does the everyday work.

Greetings and courtesy formulas

Punten and mangga are the two words to learn first, before any grammar. Punten is what you say walking past someone, entering a house, asking a question of a stranger, or squeezing through a crowd; mangga is the answering permission. The pair runs through Sundanese social life the way please and thank you run through English, and using them correctly buys you more goodwill than any amount of vocabulary.

Saying who you are

Survival phrases

Sundanese has an unusually rich pronoun system, because each person is expressed differently at each level of politeness. The table below is the core of it — and it is worth noticing that the cohag column exists but should stay firmly out of your own mouth.

Sundanese personal pronouns by register

Look at the plurals: anjeun → aranjeun, manéh → maranéh, manéhna → maranéhna. That inserted -ar- is not specific to pronouns; it is the general Sundanese plural, and section 5 takes it apart.

Practice reader — A1 story: Di imah kuring (At my house)

This passage is a constructed teaching text, assembled for this guide rather than quoted from a published source. It stays in basa loma throughout, uses only the grammar of sections 1–3, and its vocabulary has been checked term by term against this guide's 657-card deck; every word that is not on a card is listed in the glossary below. Read it aloud and watch the eu and é vowels.

Sampurasun! Ngaran kuring Néng. Kuring ti Bandung. Imah kuring leutik tapi bérésih. Di jero imah aya méja, korsi, jeung lomari. Aya jandéla ogé. Unggal isuk kuring nginum cikopi. Bapa kuring nginum téh. Ema kuring masak sangu jeung sayur. Dahareun di imah kuring ngeunah pisan.

Di imah aya budak dua. Adi kuring lalaki ngaranna Dadan. Adi kuring awéwé ngaranna Ratna. Dadan umurna tujuh taun, Ratna umurna salapan taun. Duanana kénéh sakola. Kuring mah diajar di universitas. Unggal poé kuring indit ka universitas. Stasiun karéta deukeut ti imah kuring, jadi kuring teu capé. Karétana gancang tur bérésih.

Di universitas kuring diajar basa jeung sajarah. Babaturan kuring loba pisan. Kuring resep maca buku jeung nulis carita. Kuring teu resep olahraga. Guru kuring ngajar kalawan alon sarta gampang. Lamun kuring teu ngarti, kuring nanya. Guru kuring tuluy ngajawab. Beurang kuring dahar di warung deukeut sakola. Warungna leutik tapi alus. Kuring meuli sangu, sayur, jeung tahu, tuluy nginum cai. Hargana murah. Kuring mayar, tuluy leumpang deui ka universitas.

Soré kuring balik. Kuring leumpang alon-alon. Langitna beureum. Di jalan aya ucing hideung jeung anjing leutik. Peuting kuring diajar, tuluy saré. Isukan kuring rék indit ka pasar jeung ema. Kuring bungah pisan.

Translation. Hello! My name is Néng. I am from Bandung. My house is small but clean. Inside the house there is a table, a chair and a cupboard. There is a window too. Every morning I drink coffee. My father drinks tea. My mother cooks rice and vegetables. The food at my house is very tasty. — At home there are two children. My younger brother is called Dadan. My younger sister is called Ratna. Dadan is seven years old, Ratna is nine. Both are still at school. I myself study at university. Every day I go to the university. The railway station is near my house, so I don't get tired. The train is fast and clean. — At the university I study language and history. I have a great many friends. I like reading books and writing stories. I don't like sport. My teacher teaches slowly and simply. If I don't understand, I ask. My teacher then answers. At midday I eat at a food stall near the school. The stall is small but good. I buy rice, vegetables and tofu, then drink water. The price is cheap. I pay, then walk back to the university. — In the afternoon I go home. I walk slowly. The sky is red. In the street there is a black cat and a small dog. At night I study, then sleep. Tomorrow I am going to the market with my mother. I am very happy.

Reader glossary — forms not on the flashcard deck

4. Numbers and time

Sundanese numerals

Sundanese shares with Javanese a traditional -likur series for the twenties: salikur 21, dua likur 22, tilu likur 23, and the separate word salawé for 25. These coexist with the transparent dua puluh hiji type, which younger and urban speakers increasingly prefer, but the likur forms remain alive in markets and in older speech.⁵ The prefix sa- is ‘one’ throughout: saratus, sarébu, salaksa.

Time words in both registers

The days of the week are Ahad (Sunday), Senén, Salasa, Rebo, Kemis, Juma'ah, Saptu — Arabic in origin, as across much of the archipelago. Minggu means both ‘week’ and ‘Sunday’; the lemes form for the period is minggon.

5. Plurals, and the -ar- infix

Most western Austronesian languages make plurals by reduplication. Sundanese does something different and much more interesting: it inserts the infix -ar- into the stem, after the first consonant.¹

The plural infix -ar- / -al-

Two conditioning rules. The infix becomes -al- if the stem begins with l, or if the stem contains an r after the infix position. And if the stem begins with a vowel, the infix simply becomes a prefix.¹ Bennett notes an important refinement: the al substitution does not apply when the offending r is in the onset of the following syllable, which is why curiga pluralises as caruriga and not *caluriga.⁶ This is consonant dissimilation, and it is well studied precisely because Sundanese does it so cleanly.

Three worked examples, each attested in the Wikipedia article:¹

Mangga téh, tarahuna haneut kénéh. — ‘Please ma'am, the bean curds are still warm.’

Barudak leutik lalumpatan. — ‘Small children running around.’

Ieu kaén batik aralus sadayana. — ‘All of these batik cloths are beautiful.’

Notice that the infix also marks plural agreement on adjectives, not just on nouns: aralus is the plural of the adjective alus. And the prefix can be doubled for intensity or for plural groups — bararudak is many, many children, or many groups of them; balalageur is a plural ‘very well-behaved’.¹

6. Prepositions: the six-way system

Sundanese has three basic spatial prepositions, each with a paired ‘specific’ form.⁷ The distinction is not one English makes, and getting it wrong produces sentences that are comprehensible but noticeably foreign.

The three general prepositions and their specific counterparts

The classic demonstration uses the single word cai ‘water’, which in West Java also means the bathroom:¹

One noun, six prepositions

For finer relations the prepositions combine with locative nouns, which — of course — have their own loma and lemes forms.⁸

Locative nouns

To express a relative position without a following noun these take the suffix -eun: ti pengker bumi and pengkereun bumi both mean ‘from behind the house’.⁸ Compare di luhur bumi ‘on top of the house’ with dina luhur lomari ‘on top of the cupboard’ — a house is a place, so it takes di; a cupboard is an object, so it takes dina.

Practice reader — A2 story: Ka pasar (To the market)

A second constructed teaching text. It adds direct speech, the anu relativiser, the numeral system including salawé, and the register jump that happens naturally when a market seller addresses a customer as ibu and answers mangga. Vocabulary audited against the deck as before; the rest is glossed underneath.

Poé Minggu Ratna jeung ema indit ka pasar. Pasar di lembur téh gedé tur ramé. Di hareup aya warung anu ngajual sangu jeung lauk. Di tukang aya jalma anu ngajual sayur, bungbuahan, uyah, jeung gula. Ema meuli hayam hiji, endog sapuluh, jeung sayur loba. Ratna nyekel kantong, ema mayar.

“Ieu naon?” Ratna nanya. “Ieu buah,” ceuk ema. “Ngeunah pisan. Sabaraha hargana?” “Salawé rébu,” ceuk jalma anu ngajual. Ema mikir sakedapan, tuluy ngomong: “Awis. Dua puluh rébu waé, nya?” Jalma éta seuri tuluy ngomong: “Mangga, kanggo ibu.”

Sanggeus éta Ratna jeung ema leumpang ka warung deukeut lawang pasar. Di dinya aya méja tilu jeung korsi dalapan. Ratna diuk, ema diuk di gigirna. Ratna dahar sangu jeung endog goréng. Ema nginum téh haneut. Dahareunana ngeunah tur hargana teu awis. Di warung éta loba jalma: aya bapa-bapa anu nginum cikopi, aya ibu-ibu anu ngobrol, aya budak leutik anu ulin di handap méja.

Sanggeus anggeus, Ratna jeung ema balik. Panonpoéna panas pisan, jadi duanana leumpang alon di handap tangkal. Di jalan aya anjing saré jeung manuk di luhur. “Isukan kuring rék ka dieu deui,” ceuk Ratna. Ema seuri tuluy ngomong: “Mangga, tapi isukan manéh anu mayar.” Ratna seuri tarik. Peuting éta manéhna nyarita ka bapa ngeunaan pasar, buah, jeung jalma anu seuri tadi.

Translation. On Sunday Ratna and her mother went to the market. The village market is big and busy. At the front there is a stall selling rice and fish. At the back there are people selling vegetables, fruit, salt and sugar. Mother buys one chicken, ten eggs and a lot of vegetables. Ratna holds the bag, mother pays. — “What is this?” Ratna asks. “This is a fruit,” says mother. “Very tasty. How much is it?” “Twenty-five thousand,” says the seller. Mother thinks for a moment, then says: “Expensive. Twenty thousand, all right?” The man smiles and says: “Please do, ma'am.” — After that Ratna and her mother walk to a stall near the market gate. There are three tables and eight chairs there. Ratna sits down, her mother sits beside her. Ratna eats rice with fried egg. Mother drinks warm tea. The food is tasty and the price is not high. There are a lot of people in that stall: some men drinking coffee, some women chatting, a small child playing under a table. — When they have finished, Ratna and her mother go home. The sun is very hot, so the two of them walk slowly under the trees. In the street there is a sleeping dog and a bird up above. “Tomorrow I want to come here again,” says Ratna. Her mother smiles and says: “Do, but tomorrow you're paying.” Ratna laughs loudly. That night she tells her father about the market, the fruit, and the man who smiled earlier.

Reader glossary — forms not on the flashcard deck

7. Verbs, voice and the many ways to negate

Most active Sundanese verbs are simply the root: diuk ‘sit’, dahar ‘eat’. Others take a nasal prefix whose shape depends on the first sound of the root.¹

Active verb prefixes

The passive is formed with di- on the verb and ku before the agent — a pattern that is used far more in Sundanese than the English passive is in English. The Wikipedia article gives matched polite and familiar sets:¹

Passive di- … ku, in both registers

Negation is where Sundanese gets genuinely intricate, because the negator depends on what is being negated and on the register.¹ There is no single word for ‘not’.

The Sundanese negation system

Abdi teu acan neda. — ‘I have not eaten yet.’ (lemes)

Urang acan dahar. — ‘I have not eaten yet.’ (loma)

Buku abdi mah sanés nu ieu. — ‘My book is not this one.’ (lemes)

Buku urang mah lain nu ieu. — ‘My book is not this one.’ (loma)

Note teu hayang, which literally means ‘not want’ but can sound aggressive depending on context — embung is the neutral casual counterpart of lemes alim.¹ These distinctions are dialect-sensitive; the forms above are Priangan Sundanese, and other dialects negate differently.

Questions are introduced by dupi (polite) or ari (familiar), which work like a topicaliser — ‘as for X …?’:¹

Question openers

Question words

8. The register system, properly

Sundanese has an elaborate system of registers marking levels of formality.⁹ Historically six levels were recognised — basa kasar (rough), sedeng (medium), lemes (polite), lemes pisan (very polite), kasar pisan (very rough) and basa panengah (intermediate). At the 1988 Congress of Sundanese Language in Bogor the system was officially narrowed to two: basa hormat (respectful) and basa loma (fair, neutral), and the name of the whole system was changed to tatakrama basa, literally ‘language manners’.¹ The substance did not change; the terminology did.

Below the two official levels there is in practice a third, cohag, used in anger or to mark extreme intimacy. It exists in the Priangan dialect and is largely absent from others, such as Bantenese.¹ As a learner: know it exists, recognise it, never use it.

Basa loma is the standard written variety. This is the point learners most often get backwards. Sundanese magazines, newspapers, literary books and theses are mostly written in loma, not in lemes.¹ Lemes is for speaking to people who warrant respect; loma is for print and for ordinary life.

Core loma ↔ lemes pairs

Look carefully at the rows with two lemes forms. Within the polite level, some words further split into humble and respectful forms: the humble one refers to yourself, the respectful one to the addressee and to third persons.¹ The clearest case is ‘house’: imah is the neutral loma word, rorompok is my own house, and bumi is yours or someone else's. Say bumi about your own house and you have just paid yourself a compliment.

Anderson's study of speech levels in Sundanese is the standard analytical treatment in English and is worth reading once you can handle the basic contrast.⁹ The system is structurally comparable to those of Javanese, Japanese, Korean and Thai — but the vocabulary is entirely its own, and Javanese krama words will not help you here.

Practice reader — B1 story: Sémah di hareup panto (A guest at the door)

A constructed teaching text whose whole point is the register switch: the same speaker moves from lemes with a visiting elder to loma with her own father within four paragraphs, then the text steps back and explains what just happened — in Sundanese. Every lemes and loma pair used here appears in the table above or on the deck; the rest is glossed below. Being able to do this switch is the real test of Sundanese, and it is learned by listening far more than by studying.

Ratna keur diajar di kamarna waktu aya sémah datang. Sémahna lalaki anu geus kolot, babaturan bapana. Ratna terang yén manéhna kudu ngomong ku basa lemes, jadi manéhna nangtung tuluy ngomong: “Wilujeng sonten, Pa. Mangga, calik heula. Bapa abdi nuju aya di pengker.”

Sémah éta seuri. “Hatur nuhun. Anjeun putra Pa Hadi, sanés? Namina saha?” “Nami abdi Ratna, Pa.” “Tos lami teu tepang sareng bapa anjeun. Anjeunna damang?” “Muhun, damang. Danget ieu nuju digawé di pengker.”

Ratna tuluy leumpang ka tukang tuluy ngomong ka bapana ku basa loma: “Pa, aya sémah. Jalma kolot, babaturan manéh. Geus dititah diuk di hareup.” Bapana ngajawab: “Enya, kuring ka ditu ayeuna. Manéh nyieun téh. Ulah poho gula.” Ratna ngajawab: “Enya, Pa.”

Anu kudu diperhatikeun dina carita ieu nyaéta robahna basa. Ka sémah anu leuwih kolot jeung can raket, Ratna maké basa lemes: calik, bumi, nami abdi, muhun. Ka bapana sorangan, di jero imah, manéhna maké basa loma: diuk, imah, kuring, enya. Urang Sunda ngaganti basa kitu sababaraha kali dina sapoé, tur euweuh anu ngarasa anéh.

Anu hésé pikeun urang deungeun lain kecapna, tapi iraha kecap éta kudu dipaké. Lamun manéh maké basa lemes ka babaturan anu geus raket, babaturan manéh bakal ngarasa jauh. Lamun manéh maké basa loma ka jalma anu leuwih kolot, jalma éta bakal ngarasa teu dihormat. Jadi urang Sunda salawasna ngadéngékeun heula: saha anu ngomong, sabaraha umurna, jeung aya di mana.

Translation. Ratna was studying in her room when a guest arrived. The guest was a man who was already old, a friend of her father's. Ratna knew that she had to speak in lemes, so she stood up and said: “Good afternoon, sir. Please, do sit down first. My father is out the back at the moment.” — The guest smiled. “Thank you. You are Pak Hadi's daughter, aren't you? What is your name?” “My name is Ratna, sir.” “It's been a long time since I saw your father. Is he well?” “Yes, he is well. He is working out the back at the moment.” — Ratna then walked to the back and said to her father in loma: “Dad, there's a guest. An old man, a friend of yours. He's already been asked to sit at the front.” Her father answered: “Yes, I'll go over now. You make tea. Don't forget the sugar.” Ratna answered: “Yes, Dad.” — What has to be noticed in this story is the change of language. To a guest who is older and not yet close, Ratna uses lemes: calik, bumi, nami abdi, muhun. To her own father, inside the house, she uses loma: diuk, imah, kuring, enya. Sundanese people switch like this several times a day, and nobody finds it strange. — What is hard for a foreigner is not the words but when those words have to be used. If you use lemes to a friend you are already close to, your friend will feel you are distant. If you use loma to someone older, that person will feel they are not being respected. So Sundanese people always listen first: who is speaking, how old they are, and where they are.

Reader glossary

9. An attested text: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Everything you have read so far was written for you. Here is Sundanese that was not: Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the official translation published by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.¹⁰ It is a good first authentic text because you already know the shape of the English.

Sakumna jalma gubrag ka alam dunya téh sipatna merdika jeung boga martabat katut hak-hak anu sarua. Maranéhna dibéré akal jeung haté nurani, campur-gaul jeung sasamana aya dina sumanget duduluran.

‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’

Working through the UDHR sentence

Notice that the official translation is in basa loma — boga, jalma, maranéhna — which confirms the point from section 8: loma, not lemes, is the register of published Sundanese prose.

10. Aksara Sunda and the other scripts

Sundanese has been written in more scripts than almost any other language of Indonesia. The earliest attested documents are in Old Sundanese script (Aksara Sunda Kuno), used from roughly the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. After the arrival of Islam, Pegon — Arabic script adapted for Sundanese — came into use, chiefly for religious writing. Latin arrived with the Europeans and now carries almost all Sundanese literature.¹

Writing systems used for Sundanese

The regional governments of West Java and Banten actively promote Aksara Sunda Baku, the standardised modern Sundanese script, in public places and on road signs — so a visitor to Bandung will see it on street signage even though nobody writes their shopping list in it.¹¹¹ Pegon can still be seen in public in places like Lembang and Tasikmalaya.¹ In the endonym at the top of this guide, Basa Sunda appears as ᮘᮞ ᮞᮥᮔ᮪ᮓ in Aksara Sunda and as بَاسَا سُوْندَا in Pegon.

The Latin alphabet is the one to learn. It is the ordinary 26 letters plus the two orthographic vowels é and eu, and the current EBS spelling has been in force since 1988 — earlier systems (Ardiwinata 1912–1947, Surawidjaja 1947–1959, LBBS 1959, EBSYD 1972–1987) will be encountered in older books and differ in exactly the places you would expect: the representation of the vowels.¹

11. Dialects, and which Sundanese to learn

Sundanese dialects are conventionally described by region.¹ The one to learn is Priangan, both because it covers the largest area and the largest population and because it is the variety taught in schools throughout West Java and Banten from primary through to the twelfth year.¹ This guide and its deck follow Priangan.

The conventional dialect divisions

Two cautions. The Baduy variety of the Kanékés community in Lebak is frequently counted as a separate language and has its own ISO code, bac; do not treat it as a casual regional accent.¹ And the register facts in this guide are Priangan facts — the cohag level in particular is largely a Priangan phenomenon, and Bantenese generally does not recognise it.¹

12. What English speakers get wrong

• Reading bare e as /e/. It is schwa. Only é is /ɛ/, and the accent is not optional.
• Turning eu into a diphthong or into English ur. It is one high central vowel, /ɨ/.
• Assuming lemes is always better. Published Sundanese is written in loma, and lemes to a close friend creates distance.
• Using bumi for your own house. Your own house is rorompok; bumi is someone else's.
• Using tuang about yourself. Of yourself it is neda; tuang is for other people.
• Reduplicating for plurals. Sundanese infixes -ar-, and the adjective agrees: barudak … aralus.
• Using di where dina belongs. Places take di; objects take dina. Di cai and dina cai are different rooms, so to speak.
• Reaching for one word for ‘not’. Choose between teu, lain / sanés, acan, moal and embung / alim according to what is negated.
• Forgetting punten. Walking past someone in silence reads as rude.
• Treating Sundanese as a Javanese dialect. It is a separate language with a different position in the family, and saying otherwise will not go down well.

Practice reader — B2 story: Aksara di jalan (Script in the street)

A constructed teaching text at the level of a magazine feature. It uses the di- passive freely, subordinates with anu and lamun, and expects abstract vocabulary. Everything it asserts about the scripts is sourced in section 10 above; the unfamiliar words are glossed underneath.

Di Bandung jeung di Tasikmalaya, aksara Sunda katénjo unggal poé. Ngaran jalan ditulis dua kali: ku aksara Latin jeung ku aksara Sunda. Loba jalma anu ngaliwat teu maca aksara éta, tapi aksarana angger aya di dinya, siga tanda yén kota ieu boga sajarah sorangan. Di sakola, barudak diajar nulis aksara Sunda. Anu hésé lain wangun aksarana, tapi aturan rarangkénna: hiji aksara bisa robah rupana gumantung kana tanda anu nempel.

Sajarahna panjang pisan. Saméméh aya aksara Latin, urang Sunda geus nulis maké aksara Sunda Kuno. Naskah-naskah kawas Sanghyang Siksa Kandang Karesian, Carita Parahyangan, jeung Amanat Galunggung ditulis ku aksara éta. Sanggeus Islam asup, aya deui aksara Pegon anu dipaké di pasantrén nepi ka ayeuna. Jadi hiji basa bisa boga loba aksara, gumantung kana jaman jeung kana kaperluan.

Dina abad ka dua puluh hiji, aksara Sunda asup kana komputer. Ayeuna aya font jeung keyboard, jadi jalma bisa nulis basa Sunda ku aksara Sunda dina HP. Pamaréntah Jawa Barat jeung Banten ogé ngadukung pamakéan aksara Sunda di tempat umum jeung dina tanda jalan.

Tapi téknologi wungkul teu cukup. Anu leuwih penting nyaéta jalma anu daék maca jeung nulis. Lamun aksara ngan jadi hiasan dina tanda jalan, aksara éta teu hirup. Basa ogé kitu: lamun barudak ngan diajar basa Sunda di kelas tapi teu ngomong basa Sunda di imah, basana bakal leungit lalaunan. Anu ngajaga basa lain pamaréntah wungkul, tapi kulawarga jeung tatangga.

Translation. In Bandung and Tasikmalaya, the Sundanese script is visible every day. Street names are written twice: in Latin letters and in Sundanese script. Many people passing by do not read that script, but it stays there all the same, like a sign that this city has a history of its own. At school, children learn to write the Sundanese script. The hard part is not the shape of the letters but the rules for the rarangkén: one letter can change its appearance depending on the mark attached to it. — Its history is very long. Before the Latin alphabet existed, Sundanese people were already writing in the Old Sundanese script. Manuscripts such as the Sanghyang Siksa Kandang Karesian, Carita Parahyangan and Amanat Galunggung were written in that script. After Islam arrived, there was also the Pegon script, which is used in pesantrens to this day. So one language can have many scripts, depending on the era and on the purpose. — In the twenty-first century, the Sundanese script entered the computer. Now there are fonts and keyboards, so people can write Sundanese in Sundanese script on a phone. The governments of West Java and Banten also support the use of the Sundanese script in public places and on street signs. — But technology alone is not enough. What matters more is people who are willing to read and write. If the script becomes only a decoration on a street sign, that script is not alive. The language is the same: if children only learn Sundanese in the classroom but do not speak Sundanese at home, the language will be lost gradually. What protects a language is not the government alone, but families and neighbours.

Reader glossary

13. Books, media and culture in Sundanese

Sundanese has a continuous literary tradition running from fourteenth-century palm-leaf manuscripts to a living magazine culture, and a music and performance scene that is one of the most vigorous in Indonesia.

Reading

• Manglé (Bandung, founded 1957) — the best-known Sundanese-language magazine and the natural first target for a learner reading real Sundanese prose.
• Cupumanik and other Sundanese cultural periodicals — smaller-circulation but substantial writing on language, literature and culture.
• Sundanese Wikipedia (Wikipédia basa Sunda) — a large free corpus in the Latin orthography this guide teaches.
• Classical manuscripts — Carita Parahyangan, Sanghyang Siksa Kandang Karesian and Amanat Galunggung, the core Old Sundanese texts, available in scholarly editions with Indonesian translation.
• Ajip Rosidi — the central figure of twentieth-century Sundanese letters, as poet, novelist, publisher and advocate; his work is the bridge between the classical tradition and modern writing.¹²
• Rigg's 1862 A Dictionary of the Sunda Language of Java — the first substantial Sundanese–English dictionary, long out of copyright and still the source of some of the numeral data used in this guide's deck.⁵

Watching and listening

• Wayang golek — the Sundanese rod-puppet theatre, performed in Sundanese, with the dalang moving between registers character by character. The closest thing to an immersion course that exists.
• Degung and gamelan Sunda — the Sundanese gamelan tradition, distinct in tuning and repertoire from the Javanese.
• Kacapi suling and tembang Sunda Cianjuran — sung poetry accompanied by zither and flute; the classical vocal register.
• Jaipongan and pop Sunda — the popular dance and song traditions. Sundanese pop lyrics are ordinary spoken loma and make excellent listening practice.
• Regional broadcasting — West Java's regional television and radio stations carry Sundanese-language news, drama and talk.

• Glottolog 5.3 — Sundanese (sund1252) — Classification, ISO code, and links onward to WALS, PHOIBLE and OLAC.
• Ethnologue — Sundanese (sun) — Speaker estimates and status; also lists Baduy Sundanese (bac) and Old Sundanese (osn).
• Wikipedia — Sundanese language — Phonology, alphabet, registers, pronouns, the -ar- infix, prepositions, negation, UDHR text.
• Wikipedia — Sundanese script — Aksara Sunda Baku, the rarangkén diacritics and the Unicode block.
• OHCHR — Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Sundanese — The full official translation. The best free source of attested modern Sundanese prose.
• Hardjadibrata, Sundanese: A Syntactical Analysis (1985) — Pacific Linguistics D-65. The reference syntax, and the source of the preposition and locative analysis.
• Anderson, “The use of speech levels in Sundanese” (1997) — Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics 16, 1–45. The standard English-language treatment of the register system.
• Kurniawan & Davies, “Finiteness in Sundanese” (2015) — Oceanic Linguistics 54. Modern generative work on Sundanese clause structure.

14. Where the language goes deepest

Three things separate a very good second-language speaker of Sundanese from someone who has the language whole.

The first is the particles. Téh, mah, da, waé, nya, wungkul, kénéh, ogé, deui — these carry the attitude of a Sundanese sentence, and none of them translates. Téh marks a topic, mah contrasts it, da supplies a reason you assume the hearer already accepts. A sentence with the right words and the wrong particles is understood and sounds foreign. There is no shortcut here except a great deal of listening.

The second is the literary register. Tembang Sunda Cianjuran and the classical poetic forms use vocabulary — galih for heart, giri for mountain, warsih for year — that sits above even lemes pisan, much of it Sanskrit or Old Sundanese. Following a Cianjuran text is a different skill from following a conversation, and Sundanese speakers themselves differ widely in how much of it they command.

The third is knowing which language to be speaking. Most Sundanese speakers live their lives in at least two languages, and the choice between Sundanese and Indonesian in a given moment carries meaning — formality, distance, generation, the difference between the office and the kitchen. A learner who insists on Sundanese in a setting that has moved to Indonesian has misjudged something real.

An honest note on the ceiling. This guide gives you the structure of the language, a working command of the two registers, and 657 audited words. It cannot give you the particle intuitions or the social calibration, because those come from being in the room. What it can do is get you far enough that Sundanese speakers will keep talking to you in Sundanese — which, given how quickly conversations with foreigners default to Indonesian, is the whole game.

15. Where this guide's facts come from

Classification, codes and speaker numbers come from Glottolog and Ethnologue.¹² The phonology, alphabet, register system, pronoun table, the -ar- plural infix, the verb prefixes, the negation system, the question openers, the preposition contrasts and the dialect list are taken from the English Wikipedia article on Sundanese, retrieved 4 August 2026, with the specific scholarly attributions Wikipedia itself gives: Müller-Gotama for the consonant inventory,⁴ Hardjadibrata for the prepositions and locatives,⁷⁸ Anderson for the speech levels,⁹ Bennett for the ar/al dissimilation refinement,⁶ and Blust for the family position.³ The script section draws on the Wikipedia article on the Sundanese script.¹¹ The UDHR text is the official OHCHR translation.¹⁰ Rigg's 1862 dictionary is cited for the numeral data used by this guide's deck.⁵ Ajip Rosidi is cited via Wikipedia for the status of Pegon.¹²

Known limits. The register facts are Priangan facts and do not describe Banten or Baduy usage. The four graded readers are constructed teaching texts, not attested literature; only the UDHR passage in section 9 and the plural-infix, negation, passive and question examples are quoted from a source. Tone and intonation are not covered at all, because no source consulted here describes them adequately. And no part of this guide has yet been reviewed by a fluent Sundanese speaker; corrections are welcome.