These participants will include young speakers, teachers, and language activists.
The agency's head, Aminudin Aziz, told the press on Tuesday that this projection is considered rational, given the program's coverage in 2022, which involved 2.9 million people in 13 provinces.
"In 2022, our target was 1.4 million, but we recorded 2.9 million participants. Hopefully, this year, the number exceed 3.5 million participants," he said.
Aziz explained that the program's main targets are young speakers at elementary and junior high schools in 19 provinces as they will be the inheritors of their respective mother tongues.
He emphasized the crucial role of teachers and language enthusiasts in the RBD program as they have unique methods of encouraging young speakers to preserve local languages.
He pointed out that a 2021 study of 25 local languages revealed a continued decline in interest among young speakers.
This trend was corroborated by the 2020 long-form population census (LF SP2020) data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS), which indicated that only 61–62 percent of youngsters from Generation Z and Generation Alpha use the local language in their social interactions.
Therefore, if the projected 3.5 million people participate in the RBD 2023, the program is expected to successfully combat the decline of local languages, Aziz concluded.
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Translator: Ahmad Muzdaffar, Raka Adji
Editor: Anton Santoso
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