Talk:Languages of Indonesia

message: I'm surprised that Dutch is not on the list, given that Indonesia was a Dutch colony for so long. Aren't there any Dutch speakers remaining? Dutch is listed as a language in the CIA factbook entry, but it doesn't give an estimated number of speakers. I have no idea, and I'm neither Dutch nor Indonesian. Just curious. --Itub 19:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: AFAIK, Dutch is used only by some small groups of (elderly) people, especially of Maluku and Manado origin. Dutch is taught also in some universities, as a language itself, or learned to help understanding in law literatures (Indonesia still uses continental system of law). The number of Dutch user nowadays is relatively very low. Kembangraps  18:24, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dutch? 

message: If a tourist speaks in Malay, would it be understood in Indonesia? Are these two languages mutually intelligible like Tamil and Malayalam?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.215.54.175 (talk) 12:55, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Most Indonesians understand Malay's dialect of Malaysia, because it is also used in the regions such as Riau and Kalimantan.back to goguryeo (talk) 03:56, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Malay

message: When adding up the numbers of speakers of Chinese languages it comes to a total of 22.1 million speakers. According to most statistics, there are around 8 million ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. Why this huge discrepancy?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Takeaway (talk • contribs) 20:50, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Undoubtedly there is overlap. Some of my Chinese-Indonesian friends speak several languages (aka dialects). But the figures do seem rather high, given that the Indonesia page's Demography section claims only 1% of Indonesia is ethnic Chinese. So, one would think that no single Chinese language has more than 2-3 million speakers, unless there are lots of fluent pribumi, but my guess is that most pribumi are only partially fluent (Chinese might be their fourth language). Martindo (talk) 00:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

text: Pending clear sources, I updated the Chinese figures to fit their original location in the table. Note that Fujian and Teo Chew are considered two subdialects of Min Nan -- maybe should not be listed separatedly here. Comments from speakers of those languages, please! Martindo (talk) 00:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Chinese languages

message: After a thorough review of the 2009 version of Ethnologue, I made several revisions:
1. New Column called "year surveyed" (with "census" inserted if indicated by Ethnologue). This column is necessary because caution should be exercised when comparing a tally taken in 1982 (e.g., Chinese) and one taken in 2000 (e.g., Nias).
I generally assumed that large languages continue to grow as the population increases. Thus, when figures were equal, I listed the language surveyed earlier ahead of the other(s).
2. Extended the list to include languages that can be rounded up to 300,000 native speakers. This was somewhat arbitrary, based on reviewing the Ethnologue page for Java/Bali first, and encountering Osing there. We can discuss whether to change the lower cutoff.
HOWEVER, a cutoff of 1 million would mean excluding Chinese languages, unless someone can find WP:RS figures showing over that number of native speakers. Alternatively, an exception could be made for Chinese (as done for Indonesian itself at the top of the table) by noting that the tally includes non-native speakers. A reliable source would be needed for figures that include second-language speakers.
3. According to Ethnologue and WP, both Hokkien and Teochew are part of the Min Nan language, thus they have been grouped as one entry in the table.
4. I avoided entries for "Malay" in various regions of Indonesia because Ethnologue's use of that term as part of a language name (e.g., Jambi Malay) seems to hedge the distinction between dialect and language. I only included languages named "x Malay" if that province had no other languages of comparable size.
Kindly discuss any changes here and wait a day or three before implementing them. Martindo (talk) 01:20, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expanded Table of Languages 

message: Page views:
* Indonesia: https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBreakdownHuge.htm#Indonesia : 58% Indonesian vs 1% Malay.
* Malaysia: https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryBreakdownHuge.htm#Malaysia : 8% Malay vs 2% Indonesian.
Page edits:
* Indonesia: https://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageEditsPerCountryBreakdown.htm#Indonesia : 45% Indonesian vs 1% Malay.
* Malaysia: http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2012-12/SquidReportPageEditsPerCountryBreakdownHuge.htm#Malaysia : 35% Malay vs 1% Indonesian.
Are you sure Indonesian and Malay can be merged as one language? They really seem to be two separate languages according to Wikipedia's statistics patterns : Indonesian in Indonesia and Malay in Malaysia. Or is that a simple question of name and nationalism like Romanian and Moldavian which are the same language ? --Loup Solitaire 81 (talk) 21:07, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indonesian/Malay: different languages ? 

message: Hello,
Currently, most articles on the English Wikipedia state that the Dutch language in Indonesia is next to extinct (excl. lawyers). However, at least three other Wikipedias (Dutch, Norse and, perhaps most importantly, Indonesian itself) state that the Dutch language is still in use in "forestry, farming, anthropology, commerce, medicine, tourism, jurisdiction, science and certain cities" and that dozens of thousands of Indonesians are learning the language, wether it be for these purposes, as source language, for fun, or "to learn their grandma's language" (lit. translation). And finally, they say it is even the majority language in certain cities (eg. Depok?).
To me, all this seems to imply that the language is actually growing (Even if slowly) or is at least stable in the country. Though unfortunately, in spite of all three Wikipedias saying the same, none of the three give any sources, excluding only a link to a website that can't be viewed even with the Wayback Machine. I want to add this information to the English Wikipedia, but without sources to confirm the opposite, it'll likely be removed. How do we go about this? 
LVDP01 (talk) 10:09, 23 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope/Importance of Dutch language