HISTORY OF INDONESIAN LANGUAGE

Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world. It is made up of 17,508 islands and is home to more than 240 million people with an immensely diverse admixture of more than 750 languages and 300 ethnic groups. To promote nationalism and sense of unity in the post colonization era, the Pancasila ideology was introduced in 1945, which underlines the national identity as culturally neutral, along with the use of Bahasa Indonesia (the Indonesian language) by all people in Indonesia. It has 43 million native speakers (2010 census). Bahasa Indonesia is spoken as a mother tongue by only 7% of the total population, it is the national language and is used by 200 million people as their second language. Outside Indonesia, Indonesian is spoken in the Netherlands, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the US. Indonesian language code is id.

Indonesian is a standardized dialect of the Malay language that was officially defined with the declaration of Indonesian independence in 1945, and the two languages remain quite similar. The Indonesian name for the language is Bahasa Indonesia (language of Indonesia); this name is sometimes used in English as well. The language is sometimes called "Bahasa" by English-speakers, though this simply means "language" in Indonesian. The language is spoken fluently as a second language by most Indonesians, who generally use a regional language (examples are Minangkabau and Javanese) at home and in their local community. Most formal education, as well as nearly all national media and other communication, are in Indonesian. In East Timor, Indonesian is recognized by the constitution as one of the two working languages (the other is English).

 

HISTORY

During the time of Dutch colonial control (until 1942), the official language was Dutch but, because Malay was more widely known, it became increasingly important both as an administrative language and as a medium of instruction in schools. Riau Malay, the dialect spoken in central Sumatra near Singapore, became the standard. In the early part of the 20th century, Malay became associated with the nationalist movement for independence. In 1928, young nationalists declared Bahasa Indonesia, their new name for Malay, to be the national language. Their aspirations were not fully realized until independence came in 1945, and Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) was decreed to be the national language.

Indonesian is a normative form of the Malay language which had been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries, and was elevated to the status of official language with the Indonesian declaration of independence in 1945, drawing inspiration from the Sumpah Pemuda (Youth's Oath) event in 1928. It is very similar to the official Malaysian form of the language. However it does differ from the Malaysian form in some ways, with differences in pronunciation and also in vocabulary.

Indonesian language is spoken as a mother tongue by only 7% of the population of Indonesia (mainly in the area of Jakarta), but altogether more than 200 million people speak it, with varying degrees of proficiency. The countries with the highest population of Indonesian speakers are Taiwan (239,000), Hong Kong (190,000), Singapore (118,000) and the Netherlands (118,000). It is an essential means of communication in a region with more than 300 native languages, used for business and administrative purposes, at all levels of education and in all mass media. However, most native Indonesian speakers would admit that the standard correct version of the language is hardly ever used in a normal daily conversation. One can read standard correct Indonesian in books and newspaper, or listen to it when watching the news on television, but few native Indonesian speakers use formally correct language in their daily conversations. While this phenomena is common to most languages in the world (for example, English).  This is mostly due to the fact that most Indonesians tend to mix aspects of their own local dialects (Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, and even Chinese) with Indonesian when speaking, which results in the creation of various types of accented Indonesian.

The Dutch colonization left an imprint on the language that can be seen in words such as polisi (police), kualitas (quality), konfrontasi (confrontation), kopi (coffee).