Editing Old Javanese (section)

=== Development ===
Old Javanese was not static, and its usage covered approximately 800 years – from the [[Kalingga kingdom]] until the founding of the [[Majapahit empire]] in 1292. The [[Javanese language]] which was spoken and written in the Majapahit era already underwent some changes and is therefore already closer to the Modern Javanese language.

==== Austronesian origins ====
The most important shaping force on Old Javanese was its [[Austronesian languages|Austronesian]] heritage in vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar that it shared with its sister languages in Southeast Asia.

==== Sanskrit influence ====
The Indian linguistic influence in the Old Javanese language was almost exclusively [[Sanskrit]] influences (approximately 25%-40%). There is no evidence of Indian linguistic elements in Old Javanese other than Sanskrit. This is different from, for example, the influence of Indian linguistics in the (Old) Malay language.

Sanskrit has had a deep and lasting impact on the vocabulary of the Javanese language. The ''Old Javanese–English Dictionary'', written by Professor [[Petrus Josephus Zoetmulder|P.J. Zoetmulder]] in 1982, contains approximately 25,500 entries, no fewer than 12,500 of which are borrowed from Sanskrit. This large number is not an indication of usage, but it is an indication that the Ancient Javanese knew and employed these Sanskrit words in their literary works. In any given Old Javanese literary work, approximately 25% of the vocabulary is derived from Sanskrit.

===== Phonology =====
Sanskrit has also influenced both the phonology and the vocabulary of Old Javanese. Old Javanese also contains [[retroflex consonant]]s, which might have been derived from Sanskrit. That is disputed by several linguists, who hold the view that it is also possible that the occurrence of these retroflex consonants was an independent development within the Austronesian language family.

===== Vocabulary =====
A related question is the form in which Sanskrit words were loaned in Old Javanese. The borrowed Sanskrit words in Old Javanese are almost without exceptions nouns and adjectives in their undeclined form (Sanskrit ''lingga''). Old Javanese texts contain many more characters with similar phonology values to represent distinct vowels and consonants in Sanskrit such as unadapted loanwords. Wherever these diacritics occur in Old Javanese texts, they are neglected in pronunciation: ''bhaṭāra'' is the same as ''baṭara'' (loss of [[vowel length]] and [[aspirated consonant|aspiration]] is also shared by [[Elu|Elu Prakrit]], the ancestor of [[Sinhala language|Sinhala]]). Nor do they influence the order of the words in the dictionary: the variants s, ṣ, and ś, for example, are all treated like s.