Old Javanese
It had a sizable vocabulary of Sanskrit loanwords but had not yet developed the formal krama language register, to be used with one's social superiors that is characteristic of modern Javanese.
Its contents concern the construction of a dam for an irrigation canal near the river Śrī Hariñjing (now shortened to Srinjing).
[1] Old Javanese was not static, and its usage covered approximately 500 years – from the Sukabumi (Kediri, East Java) inscription until the founding of the Majapahit empire in 1292.
The most important shaping force on Old Javanese was its Austronesian heritage in vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar that it shared with its sister languages in Southeast Asia.
That is disputed by several linguists, who hold the view that it is also possible that the occurrence of these retroflex consonants was an independent development within the Austronesian language family.
Old Javanese texts contain many more characters with similar phonology values to represent distinct vowels and consonants in Sanskrit such as unadapted loanwords.
Wherever these diacritics occur in Old Javanese texts, they are neglected in pronunciation: bhaṭāra is the same as baṭara (loss of vowel length and aspiration is also shared by Elu Prakrit, the ancestor of Sinhala).
Nor do they influence the order of the words in the dictionary: the variants s, ṣ, and ś, for example, are all treated like s. Medieval poems written in Old Javanese using the Kawi script continued to be circulated within the courts of Kartasura, Surakarta, and Yogyakarta.
[2] There are twenty consonants in Old Javanese which are written as b, c, d, ḍ, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, ŋ, p, r, s, t, ṭ, w, and y in Latin transliteration.
Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries.
Old Javanese verbs are morphologically complex and are conjugated by taking on a variety of affixes reflecting focus/trigger, aspect, voice, and other categories.
In case of derivation with the prefix (m)a-, the sandhi law is observed especially when the base word starts with a vowel, such as mānak (having a child) from anak (child), enak (at ease) from inak (ease), and mojar (having speech) from ujar (speech), while there is no change if the word begins with a consonant.
Old Javanese use a combination of either jĕro or dalĕm (inner part, depth) followed by clitic -ni, such as dalĕmnikang to express the idea of 'inside' or 'from inside'.
The preposition of the inside is expressed by placing either (r)i or sake before either jĕro or dalĕm (inner part, depth) without placement of both clitic -ni and definite articles.
In a basic clause, predicate and subject are separated from each other by a particle (ta) marking the border between both parts of the sentence.
Archaically or for certain nobles very strongly attached to tradition, it is used for the Midodareni, Siraman and Sungkeman ceremonies of the Javanese wedding.
The island of Lombok has adopted Kawi as its regional language, reflecting the very strong influence of East Java.
Today, it is taught in primary school education as part of the compulsory secondary language unit of National curriculum.
Kawi remains in occasional use as an archaic prose and literary language, in a similar fashion to Shakespeare-era English.
There are many important literary works written in Kawi, most notably Empu Tantular's epic poem, "Kakawin Sutasoma",[3] from which is taken the National motto of Indonesia: "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika".
A more modern work is the poem "Susila Budhi Dharma", by Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo, the founder of Subud.
[5] The first scholar to address Kawi in a serious academic manner was Wilhelm von Humboldt, who considered it the father of all Malay-Polynesian languages.
Humboldt further noted that Kawi utilizes tense distinctions, with past, present, and future, and differentiated moods via the imperative and subjunctive.
Numerous scholars have studied the language, including the Dutch expatriate Indonesian Prof. Dr. Petrus Josephus Zoetmulder S.J., who contributed an enormous quantity of original texts and serious scholarly study to the language, and his pupil and associate, Father Dr. Ignatius Kuntara Wiryamartana.
Other eminent Indonesian scholars of the language include Poedjawijatna, Sumarti Suprayitna, Poerbatjaraka and Tardjan Hadiwidjaja.
