bandung hotels, tourism and travel, West Java - indonesia

The West Java people are called the Sunda, endowed with language and traditions unique to that of the rest of Java. The Sunda language has 3 distinct hierarchies, starting from the lowly "Sunda kasar" or "harsh Sundanese", middle Sundanese, and "Sunda lemes" or "soft Sundanese". Many Sundanese words have been adopted into Indonesian, although many of its contributions consist of swear wods. The old Hindu kingdom in the region is called Pajajaran, and West Java used to be called Parahyangan, meaning "Land of the Gods". In its later history, the region fell under influence of the Central Java kingdoms, reflected in high Sundanese having borrowed much of its vocabulary and grammar from high Javanese.

In Indonesia, the Sundanese are known to be more easygoing and less formal in their temperament than their distant relatives from Central Java and East Java. This is reflected in the grammar of the Sundanese language, which has many forms allowing for meaningless light banter. Interestingly, Sundanese has contributed many swear words to the Indonesian language spoken in Jakarta.

The most popular traditional musical instrument, the "angklung", is made of parallel bamboo tubes tuned to specific frequencies with a hammer and is shaken to produce certain notes. Music is performed by a choir of angklung players, each of whom are responsible for sounding certain notes. Its melody is only slightly different from that of Central Java's gamelan ensembles.