Please watch the Indonesian course trailer! Bahasa Indonesia is the official language of Indonesia, an archipelago of 17, islands that is the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, with a total population of nearly million. Over different native languages are spoken in Indonesia. In order to facilitate communication among the Indonesian people, Bahasa Indonesia is commonly used for business and administrative purposes as well as by education institutions and mass media throughout the country.
When Dutch colonists started conquering the archipelago in the 17th century, they used Malay to communicate with the native population. This is unlike the majority of colonizers, who imposed their language on indigenous people, like the Spanish and British in the Americas. During the nationalist movement of the early 20th century, which followed centuries of oppression by the Dutch, Indonesian was formalized as the official language by the Second Youth Congress as a way of rebelling against the colonizers.
The Dutch attempted to force people to learn their language as a way of maintaining control, but when the Japanese conquered Indonesia in , Dutch was outlawed. Indonesia gained its independence in in the aftermath of World War II, and the Indonesian language became a unifying force for the country.
There is only one country where Indonesian is the national language, and that is you guessed it Indonesia. In addition to that, Indonesian is one of the languages of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which is a group of ten countries that cooperate on various economic and cultural goals. Indonesian has also acted as a working language in East Timor, which was occupied by Indonesia from to Less than a quarter of that total, however, speaks Indonesian natively: roughly 42 million.
There is no country except Indonesia in which Indonesian is spoken by at least 1 percent of the population. The countries with the highest population of Indonesian speakers are Taiwan , , Hong Kong , , Singapore , and — because of the colonial ties — the Netherlands , Indonesian is also one of three Asian languages taught in Australia as part of their Languages Other Than English program.
It has been taught there since the s, but otherwise is not widely spoken in the country. Efforts to teach it have been in decline in recent years, though Australia recognizes their cultural history is inextricably tied together with Indonesia. Madurese and Sundanese, the two other language spoken on the island of Java, add another 48 million people. Virtually all speakers of regional languages do also speak Indonesian. In many cases, they speak it more frequently, and often also better than their native tongue as Indonesian is the preferred language of inter-ethnic communication.
When they write, they will almost exclusively write in Indonesian, and the literature they read is entirely in Indonesian. The last newspaper in Javanese language was published about 75 years ago. The regional languages have also been heavily influenced by Indonesian, mainly in lexicon, but often also in phonology, morphology, and syntax. But the scenario as described above, is becoming increasingly rare. Most Indonesians nowadays grow up in a bilingual setting, and are from infant age on exposed to at least some Indonesian before they attend primary school.
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