Agricultural terms in rice production: a dialectological study

In the multilingual society of Indonesia, communication in agricultural settings is affected by variation in regional languages. This study used the methods of dialectology, isoglosses, and dialectometry to establish language boundaries and document variants of agricultural terms in three widely spoken languages in the Karawang Regency in West Java: Sundanese, Javanese, and Betawi Malay. The study addressed the challenge faced by agricultural advisors in the field of the communication gap between advisors and farmers. The advisors use Indonesian variants of agricultural terms, but farmers are familiar with terms in one of the other languages spoken in the area. This study detailed what languages are used in each village and illustrates a wealth of information on multiple variants in various languages for any particular agricultural term in Indonesian. The results will be of use to support improved yields in rice production.