Respect Older People

Respect Older People

            Respect is a feeling that describe feel of being honoured and has a value in the view of others person. Being respected is a need of every person in every culture.  Every culture has its own etiquette to respect people; there is some special etiquette to respect the older people. In these writing I would to tell about respect older people etiquette in Javanese culture, and Korean culture etiquette as comparison.

            In Javanese culture, older people must be respected. There are some etiquette which order us when we meet or have talk with older people. The example is when we meet older people than us or has higher status we must bowing our body and said some words; such as; “nyuwun sewu, nderek langkung” it also can said by say apologizing word if we meet or pass older people. This action make the older people or higher status people feel honoured and respected by us, so it implies to us be respected by them.

             In Javanese culture there is stratification of language. There are two main stratification of Javanese language, there are ngoko and krama language. Ngoko language is used is daily conversation with friends or equal status person. Krama is used if we talk to higher status person or older people. The stratification of language in java actually more complicated.  Ngoko and krama also had its own stratification; it’s depending on with our conversation partner’s status or age. For example; there is ngoko alus which is ngoko language but more polite than ordinary ngoko, even it’s still can’t be said polite as krama language. There are also krama desa, krama madya and krama alus which are the stratification of krama language.

            The essence of that etiquette is to make people respect and recognized older or important people. It’s also become the tools of social order to control the society socialization behaviour. For the older people it will make them feel honoured by the younger people. For the younger people it will make them recognized have good manners and deserve good respect from the older.

            Nowadays, that etiquette still used by most of Javanese people when they meet or talk with older people. Even there is different situation in my family, my family usually used ngoko language as daily language. So it’s common, if I talk with my parent to use ngoko language. It doesn’t mean that I not respect or dishonoured my parent, it just way we talk in daily. Actually this habit is not good if we see from the etiquette, but it lose the language barrier between us and make we easily talk each other. It also happens in my mother’s famiuly and some of my friend’s family in my neighbourhood.

            The habit of using ngoko language sometimes makes a problem. It makes difficulties for me to talk with the older people. It because, i am not common to use krama language, and if I use ngoko language it will make the older people had bad image of me. So, I just try to use krama language, I also mixed it with ngoko if I can’t find correct words. Even, my sentences mostly are not perfectly correct. At least I try to use krama and older people usually understand that.

            Like Javanese culture, Korean culture is also respect the older people. There are some etiquette of manners that rules the behaviour between younger people and older people. There are; greeting etiquette, table manner, and drinking manner.

            The greeting manner is very important manner etiquette. Like Javanese culture we also must bow our head when we meet older people. Its better if we firstly greeting the older and follow with bow our head, it will show them most respect.

            In eating and drinking there is some manner to respect the older.  The manner when we eating with oldies we must not touch the spoon or chopstick before the oldies. We must wait until the older touch the spoon or chopstick, after that we can start our meal. When we finished our meal before the older, we must wait them until they finished their meal when we want to excuse from the table. In drinking manner, when older people are offering you a drink, you should stand up and receive the glass with both hands and take the glass after bowing.  After the older finished pouring the glass, then you will drink the glass after take your seats. We must wait the older raise the glass. We also must not refuse the drink offer from the older people, because it will hurt their feeling, or disrespect them.

            At the end, every culture has its own etiquettes to respect others, especially older people. Even there are many varieties of etiquettes, we must realize and feel in our heart to respect others. It not just an action to get a person attention, its way we honoured others.