Indonesian

## Overview

**Indonesian** (*bahasa Indonesia)* is the official language of Indonesia. It is a standardized register of Malay, an Austronesian language that has been used as a lingua franca in the multilingual Indonesian archipelago for centuries. Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world. Of its large population, the majority speak Indonesian, making it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

Most Indonesians, aside from speaking the national language, are fluent in any of more than 700 indigenous local languages; examples include Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese, which are commonly used at home and within the local community. However, most formal education, and nearly all national mass media, governance, administration, judiciary, and other forms of communication, are conducted in Indonesian.

## History

Indonesian is a standardized register of "Riau Malay", which despite its common name is not the Malay dialect native to the Riau Islands, but rather the Classical Malay of the Malaccan royal courts. Originally spoken in Northeast Sumatra, Malay has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for half a millennium. It might be attributed to its ancestor, the Old Malay language (which can be traced back to the 7th century).

Trade contacts carried on by various ethnic peoples at the time were the main vehicle for spreading the Old Malay language, which was the main communications medium among the traders. Ultimately, the Old Malay language became a lingua franca and was spoken widely by most people in the archipelago.

Indonesian (in its normative form) has essentially the same material basis as the standard Malaysian register of Malay, and is therefore considered to be a variety of the pluricentric Malay language. However, it does differ from Malaysian Malay in several respects, with differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. These differences are due mainly to the Dutch and Javanese influences on Indonesian. Malaysian Malay claims to be closer to the classical Malay of earlier centuries, even though modern Malaysian has been heavily influenced, in lexicon as well as in syntax, by English.

### Dutch Colonial Era

When the Dutch East India Company (VOC) first arrived in the archipelago, the Malay language was a significant trading and political language due to the influence of Malaccan Sultanate and later the Portuguese. However, the language had never been dominant among the population of the Indonesian archipelago as it was limited to mercantile activity. The VOC adopted the Malay language as the administrative language of their trading outpost in the east. Following the bankruptcy of the VOC, the Batavian Republic took control of the colony in 1799 and it was only then that education in and promotion of Dutch began in the colony. Even then, Dutch administrators were remarkably reluctant to promote the use of Dutch compared to other colonial regimes. Dutch thus remained the language of a small elite: in 1940, only 2% of the total population could speak Dutch. Nevertheless, it did have a significant influence on the development of Malay in the colony: during the era of colonization the language that would be standardized as Indonesian absorbed a large amount of Dutch vocabulary in the form of loanwords.

### Nationalist Movement and Indonesian

The nationalist movement that ultimately brought Indonesian to its national language status rejected Dutch from the outset. However, the rapid disappearance of Dutch was a very unusual case compared to other colonized countries, where the colonial language generally has continued to function as the language of politics, bureaucracy, education, technology, and other important areas for a significant time after independence. Soenjono Dardjowidjojo even goes so far as to say that, "Indonesian is perhaps the only language that has achieved the status of a national language in its true sense" since it truly dominates in all spheres of Indonesian society. The ease with which Indonesia eliminated the language of its former colonial power can perhaps be explained as much by Dutch policy as by Indonesian nationalism, though. In marked contrast to the French, Spanish and Portuguese, who pursued an assimilation colonial policy, or even the British, the Dutch did not attempt to spread their language among the indigenous population. In fact, they consciously prevented the language from being spread by refusing to provide education, especially in Dutch, to the native Indonesians so they would not come to see themselves as equals. Moreover, the Dutch wished to prevent the Indonesians from elevating their perceived social status by taking on elements of Dutch culture. Thus, until the 1930s, they maintained a minimalist regime and allowed Malay to spread quickly throughout the archipelago.

Dutch dominance at that time covered nearly all aspects, with official forums requiring the use of Dutch, although since the Youth Congress (1928) the use of Indonesian as the national language was agreed on as one of the tools in the pro-independence struggle. As of it, Mohammad Husni Thamrin inveighed actions underestimating Indonesian. After some criticism and protests, the use of Indonesian was allowed since the *Volksraad* sessions held in July 1938. By the time they tried to counter the spread of Malay by teaching Dutch to the natives, it was too late, and in 1942, the Japanese conquered Indonesia and outlawed the use of the Dutch language. Three years later, the Indonesians themselves formally abolished the language and established *Bahasa Indonesia* as the national language of the new nation.

### Adoption as National Language

The adoption of Indonesian as the country's national language was in contrast to most other post-colonial states, as neither the language with the most native speakers (in this case, Javanese) nor the language of the former European colonial power (in this case, Dutch) was to be adopted, but rather a local language with many fewer native speakers than the most widely spoken local language (nevertheless, Malay was the second most widely spoken language in the colony after Javanese, and had many L2 speakers using it for trade, administration, and education).

In 1945 when Indonesia declared its independence, Indonesian was formally declared the national language, although then it was the native language of only about 5 per cent of the population, whereas Javanese and Sundanese were the mother tongues of 42–48 percent and 15 percent respectively. It was a combination of nationalistic, political, and practical concerns that ultimately led to the successful adoption of Indonesian as a national language.
Over the first 53 years of Indonesian independence, the country's first two presidents, Sukarno and Suharto constantly nurtured the sense of national unity embodied by Indonesian, and the language remains an important component of Indonesian identity today. Through a language planning program that made Indonesian the language of politics, education, and nation-building in general, Indonesia became one of the few success stories of an indigenous language effectively overtaking that of a country's colonizers to become the *de jure* and *de facto* official language. Despite still being a second language to most Indonesian citizens, it is unquestionably the language of the Indonesian nation as a whole, as it has had unrivaled success as a factor in nation-building and the strengthening of Indonesian identity.

## Colloquial Indonesian

While Indonesian is spoken as a mother tongue by only a small proportion of Indonesia's large population (i.e. mainly those who reside within the vicinity of Jakarta and other large predominantly Indonesian-speaking cities such as Medan and Balikpapan), over 200 million people regularly make use of the national language, with varying degrees of proficiency. In a nation that boasts more than 700 native languages and a vast array of ethnic groups, it plays an important unifying and cross-archipelagic role for the country. Use of the national language is abundant in the media, government bodies, schools, universities, workplaces, among members of the Indonesian upper-class or nobility and also in many other formal situations, although the 2010 Indonesian Census shows that only 19.94% of people over 5 years old speak mainly Indonesian at home.

Standard and formal Indonesian is used in books and newspapers and on television/ radio news broadcasts; however, few native Indonesian speakers use the formal language in their daily conversations.  This is mostly due to Indonesians combining aspects of their own local languages (e.g., Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, and Chinese) with Indonesian. This results in various "regional" Indonesian dialects, the very types that a foreigner is most likely to hear upon arriving in any Indonesian city or town. This phenomenon is amplified by the use of Indonesian slang, particularly in the cities.

## Indonesian Excerpt from Wikipedia Article "Bahasa Indonesia"

Bahasa Indonesia adalah varian bahasa Melayu, sebuah bahasa Austronesia dari cabang bahasa-bahasa Sunda-Sulawesi, yang digunakan sebagai *lingua franca* di Nusantara kemungkinan sejak abad-abad awal penanggalan modern.

Aksara pertama dalam bahasa Melayu atau Jawi ditemukan di pesisir tenggara Pulau Sumatera, mengindikasikan bahwa bahasa ini menyebar ke berbagai tempat di Nusantara dari wilayah ini, berkat penggunaannya oleh Kerajaan Sriwijaya yang menguasai jalur perdagangan. Istilah Melayu atau sebutan bagi wilayahnya sebagai Malaya sendiri berasal dari Kerajaan Malayu yang bertempat di Batang Hari, Jambi.

Istilah Melayu atau Malayu berasal dari Kerajaan Malayu, sebuah kerajaan Hindu-Budha pada abad ke-7 di hulu sungai Batanghari, Jambi di pulau Sumatera, jadi secara geografis semula hanya mengacu kepada wilayah kerajaan tersebut yang merupakan sebagian dari wilayah pulau Sumatera. Dalam perkembangannya pemakaian istilah Melayu mencakup wilayah geografis yang lebih luas dari wilayah Kerajaan Malayu tersebut, mencakup negeri-negeri di pulau Sumatera sehingga pulau tersebut disebut juga Bumi Melayu seperti disebutkan dalam Kakawin Nagarakretagama.

Ibukota Kerajaan Melayu semakin mundur ke pedalaman karena serangan Sriwijaya dan masyarakatnya diaspora keluar Bumi Melayu, belakangan masyarakat pendukungnya yang mundur ke pedalaman berasimilasi ke dalam masyarakat Minangkabau menjadi klan Malayu (suku Melayu Minangkabau) yang merupakan salah satu marga di Sumatera Barat. Sriwijaya berpengaruh luas hingga ke Filipina membawa penyebaran Bahasa Melayu semakin meluas, tampak dalam prasasti Keping Tembaga Laguna.

Bahasa Melayu kuno yang berkembang di Bumi Melayu tersebut berlogat "o" seperti Melayu Jambi, Minangkabau, Kerinci, Palembang dan Bengkulu. Semenanjung Malaka dalam Nagarakretagama disebut Hujung Medini artinya Semenanjung Medini.

Dalam perkembangannya orang Melayu migrasi ke Semenanjung Malaysia (= Hujung Medini) dan lebih banyak lagi pada masa perkembangan kerajaan-kerajaan Islam yang pusat mandalanya adalah Kesultanan Malaka, istilah Melayu bergeser kepada Semenanjung Malaka (= Semenanjung Malaysia) yang akhirnya disebut Semenanjung Melayu atau Tanah Melayu. Tetapi nyatalah bahwa istilah Melayu itui berasal dari Indonesia. Bahasa Melayu yang berkembang di sekitar daerah Semenanjung Malaka berlogat "e".

Kesultanan Malaka dimusnahkan oleh Portugis tahun 1512 sehingga penduduknya diaspora sampai ke kawasan timur kepulauan Nusantara. Bahasa Melayu Purba sendiri diduga berasal dari pulau Kalimantan, jadi diduga pemakai bahasa Melayu ini bukan penduduk asli Sumatera tetapi dari pulau Kalimantan. Suku Dayak yang diduga memiliki hubungan dengan suku Melayu kuno di Sumatera misalnya Dayak Salako, Dayak Kanayatn (Kendayan), dan Dayak Iban yang semuanya berlogat "a" seperti bahasa Melayu Baku. Penduduk asli Sumatera sebelumnya kedatangan pemakai bahasa Melayu tersebut adalah nenek moyang suku Nias dan suku Mentawai.