Indonesian Language
The Fact About Indonesian Language
| Do you know that Indonesian language is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world? According to wikipedia, Indonesian language, which is also the national language of Indonesia, has been gaining popularity due to the fact that the language is spoken by about 200 million people in the world. Being the fourth most populous nation in the world and one of the countries which has abundant natural resources, Indonesia has attracted many investors to invest their money and set up their business in Indonesia. And this has made many English-speakers come to Indonesia. | |
| The Indonesian name for “Indonesian language” is Bahasa Indonesia, which literally means the language of Indonesia. But most English-speakers in Indonesia simply call it “Bahasa” instead of Bahasa Indonesia, thus it is not an official term for Indonesian, since “bahasa” means “language”.The old Indonesian is a little bit different from the modern one. This is because the language itself is an open language which is continually developing and evolving through the influences it gets from | Other interesting posts:
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other languages, mostly regional languages (such as Sundanese, Javanese, etc), Dutch, Hokkien, English and other languages. Many aspects of Indonesian grammar are relatively easy to understand and very simple in the initial stages of study, making it one of the easiest languages to learn for adult. Indonesian language, as well as Malay, are considered as easy to learn, mainly because they are not tonal languages and they no longer use complex characters within their writing system, but rather use the Latin alphabet.
The History of Indonesian LanguageAccording to Wikipedia, the Indonesian language is a normative form of the Malay language, an Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian) language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries. Bahasa Indonesia was then 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. Another interesting fact about Indonesian language is that the language tends to be more extensively used and also regarded as a first language in urban areas, and is usually the second or even third language in rural areas. The language is still also widely used in East Timor, which was once an Indonesian province from 1975 to 1999, the Netherlands, and also in some parts of Australia (such as on Christmas Island and Cocos Islands). The Influences of Other Languages on Indonesian LanguageThe modern Indonesian language which we use today is a highly unique language which has received many influences from many other languages, including: Arabic, Sanskrit, Hokkien (Chinese), Portuguese, Dutch, and many other languages. But the biggest influence has come from Dutch, with the staggering number of around 10,000 loanwords, as a result of 350 years of colonization. Each influence it receives mostly relates to some different aspects. For instance, most loanwords from Chinese are related to food or trade since the Chinese people first came to Indonesia to trade and the native Indonesians also seemed to love the food which was introduced by the Chinese. Most loanwords from Arabic are associated with religion, which is Islam. And all these influences, including other influences, have formed the Indonesian language into what we have today. So let’s learn Indonesian with us now! |
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