Efforts to Preserve the Osing Language in the Digital Era

Osing, the mother tongue of Banyuwangi's Osing community, sits today at an intersection that is both worrying and full of promise. On one hand, fewer and fewer young people speak Osing fluently in everyday conversation. On the other, digital technology has opened entirely new pathways — ones that didn't exist for previous generations — to document, teach, and spread this language to a wider audience.

This article looks at the various efforts underway to preserve the Osing language in the digital era, from a collaborative online dictionary to government policy support, along with the opportunities that remain wide open going forward.

The State of the Osing Language Today

The use of the Osing language has been declining as more people rely on Indonesian, Javanese, and Madurese in daily life, particularly among younger generations and newcomers to the region. Many young people in Banyuwangi now favor Indonesian in their everyday speech, partly because they've grown accustomed to interacting in Indonesian from an early age, both at school and in social settings outside the family, and partly because they feel self-conscious using a regional language they perceive as less "stylish" than what they encounter on social media.

If this trend continues, the expressions, proverbs, and local wisdom embedded in the Osing language risk disappearing along with its shrinking pool of active speakers. Yet rather than being purely a threat, that same digital era also offers a set of new tools — ones no earlier generation has had access to — to push back against that trend.

From a Printed Dictionary to a Collaborative Online One

One of the most concrete preservation efforts has been the digitization of the Osing-language dictionary. The journey began with a printed Using-Indonesian regional-language dictionary published by the Blambangan Arts Council (Dewan Kesenian Blambangan) in 2002, the product of cultural figures' hard work collecting and documenting Using vocabulary and literature so it wouldn't disappear. This dictionary was later developed further by historian Hasan Ali, whose work became the primary reference for subsequent digitization efforts.

By 2012, a digital version of this dictionary began circulating as a simple downloadable piece of software, making it easier for anyone to learn Banyuwangi's native language without having to carry around a thick printed dictionary. A few years later, students and lecturers at Banyuwangi State Polytechnic (Poliwangi) developed an Android-based Using-Indonesian dictionary app, letting users simply type in a word and instantly see its meaning on their phone screen.

The most significant step came in 2019, when the Sengker Kuwung Blambangan (SKB) community association launched an online Using-language dictionary with official permission from Hasan Ali's heirs, including the singer Emilia Contessa. This online dictionary was designed to be collaborative: the public can create an account and contribute new vocabulary entries, which are then reviewed by SKB administrators before being published, with attention paid to dialect variations — for instance, the different pronunciations of "paran," "paren," or "paen" for the word "what." At the time of its launch, the printed dictionary it was based on contained around 24,000 entries — far fewer than the roughly 120,000 entries in an Indonesian dictionary, or the 150,000 entries found in a Sundanese one — so the online dictionary was designed with the hope of doubling that number within five years, thanks to open contributions from the public.

Policy Support: From National Awards to a Using-Language Magazine

Preserving the Osing language in the digital era hasn't happened in isolation — it's been backed by both central and regional government policy. Through the Language Development and Fostering Agency, Indonesia's Ministry of Education runs a Regional Language Revitalization (RBD) program that aims to restore more than a hundred regional languages and dialects across dozens of provinces every year. Banyuwangi Regency won a Regional Language Revitalization award from the Ministry of Education in 2024, and won a national award again in 2025 for its commitment and consistency in revitalizing the Using language, making it the only region in East Java to receive that award during that period.

This support has drawn in a range of stakeholders, including the local Education Office, the Culture and Tourism Office, the Blambangan Arts Council, the junior-high-level Using Language Teachers' Working Group (MGMP), and various Using language and literature communities across Banyuwangi. The East Java Language Center even regularly publishes Lontar Using, a Using-language magazine issued periodically each year, serving as both documentation and a publication outlet for works written in this regional language.

Banyuwangi's approach to preserving the Osing language also follows a structured inheritance model through school-based learning, in line with the national strategy applied to regional languages that still have a relatively large number of speakers. In other words, younger generations aren't expected to absorb this language solely from their families — they're also meant to encounter it formally through school curricula, tiered festivals, and movements encouraging people to write creative works in the regional language.

The Untapped Potential of Social Media

Beyond online dictionaries and government programs, social media holds significant untapped potential for preserving the Osing language. The experience of other regional languages in Indonesia shows that digital creative content — videos, infographics, interactive apps — can help repopularize a regional language and capture younger generations' attention. Platforms like BASAbali, for instance, have become a reference case study for the successful digital preservation of a regional language.

A number of strategies that have proven effective for other regional languages — and could plausibly be adapted for Osing — include encouraging local content creators to produce songs, vlogs, or comedy sketches in the regional language, holding regional-language festivals and competitions such as pantun (rhyming verse) or speech contests, and partnering with local influencers who have large followings to promote the use of the regional language in their everyday activities, both on social media and at public events. For the Osing language, this space remains relatively wide open — an opportunity for young Banyuwangi content creators to fill a gap that's long been dominated by Indonesian or global languages on their social media timelines.

Challenges That Still Need to Be Addressed

Despite these various efforts, the challenges facing Osing language preservation in the digital era are real. Low interest among younger generations in using their regional language day to day remains the core problem, compounded by the dominance of Indonesian and foreign languages in the digital spaces they consume every day. The number of entries in the Osing dictionary, still far behind that of other major regional languages, also shows that the work of documenting vocabulary is far from finished, meaning ongoing collaborative contribution from the community remains essential.

Beyond that, digitization's success won't count for much unless it's paired with a shift in perception — from viewing the Osing language as "old-fashioned" and "unmodern" to embracing it as a source of pride in a unique and valuable cultural identity. This is exactly where the combination of technology, government policy, and collective awareness among younger generations becomes the key to long-term success.

Why These Efforts Deserve Continued Support

Keeping the Osing language alive means keeping one of Banyuwangi's strongest cultural roots alive. Every word successfully documented in the online dictionary, every revitalization award Banyuwangi wins, and every piece of Osing-language creative content that appears on social media is a small step that, accumulated over time, can shift the trajectory from language decline toward an authentic revival of a regional language amid the rapid current of digitalization.

Preserving the Osing language in the digital era is a blend of earlier generations' hard work in manually documenting vocabulary, ongoing government policy support, and the technological opportunities now wide open for younger generations to take part in. The more hands involved whether through an online dictionary, a school classroom, or social media content the greater the chance this language stays alive for the next generation. Want to understand more about the roots and character of the language being fought for here? Read Getting to Know the Osing Language: The Mother Tongue of Banyuwangi's Osing Community, or explore Osing Proverbs and Expressions: Local Wisdom in Words.