Batak Archives

PanLex in Yogyakarta

December 6, 2018 || David Kamholz

Categories: News

Tags: Acehnese, Batak, Borobudur, Buginese, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia, Java, Javanese, Prambanan, Sundanese, under-served languages, Yogyakarta

On November 25, the PanLex team began a month-long stay in Yogyakarta, a city on the island of Java in Indonesia. Mataram, the historical region in which Yogyakarta is located, was controlled by several medieval and early modern kingdoms, and then for two centuries was part of the Dutch East Indies. The region is home to two […]

How Bamboo Shaped the Batak Script

October 1, 2018 || Benjamin Yang

Categories: Language and Linguistics, PanLex Database

Tags: bamboo, Batak, Indonesia, linguistic preservation, literacy, script, Sumatra, translation

Don’t crane your neck In the late 18th century, European travelers first began to penetrate the dense forests of the interior of northern Sumatra. From earlier reports, they expected to find tribes of headhunters and cannibals. What they found were highly literate cultures with centuries-old writing traditions and vast collections of books (and yes, a […]