OUR BELOVED INDONESIAN

When I was a primary school student, I often heard some words which were a little strange. I asked my teacher about the words. My teacher said that actually those words were not Indonesians but were foreign vocabularies. Linguists found no Indonesian words which had closest meaning to those of foreign terms. So, they only changed the foreign words pronunciation.
When Indonesia was colonized by The Netherlands, there were some Dutch vocabularies which were transformed into Indonesian. Indonesians know the word kos. Kos was derived from Dutch.
Some Arabic and Chinese who came to Indonesia for trading purpose also influenced Indonesian. Kursi (chair) was from kursiyyun, an Arabic word.

It�s interesting to read Ahmad Baihaqie�s article which was published by Indonesian newspaper, KOMPAS (01/08/08). Baihaqie said that although Arabic language also took some foreign words, the linguists used archaic Arabic for those words. Baihaqie wrote some examples. Telephone is said hatif in Arab. Hatif means �can be heard but cannot be seen�. Computer is said Al Hisab which means �a tool to count�. And hand phone is said mahmul which means �a tool which can be brought anywhere�.
I think Indonesian linguists must do the same. It will save Indonesian.