cirebon cultural tourism 
Kedongdong Village, which is located in Susukan Sub-district, Cirebon Regency, West Java, has socio-cultural characteristics, including language aspects. Geographically, Kedongdong Village is located in the middle of Javanese and Sundanese speaking communities, creating linguistic complexity in this village. The community uses a variant of Cirebonan Javanese with local characteristics in pronunciation, word formation, and vocabulary.
The Cirebon language spoken by the indigenous people of Kedongdong Village shows a strong wealth of linguistic variation in three main aspects: phonology, morphology, and lexical. As well as how language change in this village occurred gradually and was influenced by various socio-cultural factors.
Kedongdong Village exhibits a unique internal diversity in its use of the Cirebonese language. While the village shares a common linguistic heritage, the actual usage of the language varies significantly across generations—showing subtle yet meaningful phonological, morphological, and lexical differences between elderly, adults, and teenagers.
This generational variation reflects not only linguistic change but also the social dynamics of language maintenance, innovation, and contact with Indonesian and surrounding dialects.
1. Phonological Variations
This table shows that in the phonological variation of Cirebon language in this village, there is a tendency to change the typical initial consonant sound, especially in elderly and adult speakers, while adolescent speakers tend to maintain the standard form of Indonesian. The most dominant pattern is the substitution of the phoneme /b/ into /w/. This reflects the local dialectal phonological weakening of the explosive consonant /b/ into the semivowel /w/.
2. Morphological variations
The table shows that there is a shift in morphological forms from Indonesian to Cirebon that varies by age group, particularly in the process of onset nasalisation and initial consonant strengthening. Elderly and adult speakers tend to use simpler and more consistent forms (such as Kelem for Tenggelam, and Kambang for Apung), while teenagers show a tendency to add nasal prefix (ng-) resulting in active forms such as Ngelem and Ngambang.
Overall, this morphological process reflects linguistic innovation in the younger generation of Cirebon language, maintaining the local roots but modifying the forms to suit more dynamic expressive or social needs.
3. Lexical Language Variations
This table shows that there are significant lexical shifts in Cirebon language between generations, reflecting social variation and the degree of influence from Indonesian. Elderly speakers tend to use traditional Cirebon vocabulary to preserve distinctive and possibly more archaic local forms. Overall, this pattern reflects that the younger generation is more influenced by standard Indonesian, while the older generation maintains a strong local Cirebon lexicon. This shift shows the dynamics of language change not only phonologically and morphologically, but also lexically in response to the social environment and the dominant language.
