Asian Geographic - 08.2018

above Indonesian

dancers perform the

caci, a traditional

dance from Labuan

Bajo, Flores

left Two women from

Praing village fetch

water in pots

timeline

ȑProto-Malayo-
Polynesian spreads to
Southeast Asia via Taiwan

ȑResearchers estimate

west Borneo as the

birthplace of Proto-Malay

ȑPasar Malay proliferates

across the Sumatra-based

Srivijaya Empire

ȑIndonesian absorbs

loanwords from Dutch and

Javanese

ȑDutch is abolished and

Indonesian designated the

new country’s official tongue

20th century

bce

10th century 7th century

bce

18th century 20th century

“Unity in diversity” is how the archipelago

of Indonesia chooses to describe itself. The

motto of the world’s largest island country

acknowledges head-on the reality of its

people’s overwhelmingly disparate cultural

identities: a transcontinental republic of

citizens scattered across some 14,700 islands,

speaking over 700 indigenous language

variants of Austronesian and Papuan descent.

To Bahasa Indonesia, the country’s official

tongue, falls the delicate task of creating

civic unity between these wildly differing

neighbours. While fluency in Dutch was

once the height of sophistication, policies by

European colonialists to limit its spread meant

it never established a foothold in the region,

with Javanese remaining the most-spoken

native vernacular.

Unwilling to favour just one ethnic group,

however, nationalists selected the next

contender, Pasar (“marketplace”) Malay –

the ubiquitous second language for trade in

the archipelago – and transformed it into a

representation of national identity. Essentially

a Malay dialect, Indonesian shares nearly

80 percent of pronunciation, grammar, and

vocabulary with its root language.

By the time the country emerged

independent in 1945, use of the Indonesian

language enjoyed soaring popularity from the

policies of presidents Sukarno and Suharto.

Today, people still speak their mother

tongues – everything from Acehnese to

Javanese – at home and in rural areas, but the

national language dominates conversations

across school and urban settings. ag

DATA SOURCES: THOMAS MOORE DEVLIN/BABBEL, IRENE THOMPSON/A
BOUT WORLD LANGUAGES, WORLD ATLAS, GLOBAL INDONESIAN VOICES
IMAGES © SHUTTERSTOCK

LANGUAGE TIP

Indonesian has a

formal and informal

register. The formal

register is used for

writing and official

speech, while the

informal version

dominates everyday

conversations.

SIMPLE PHRASES

Good morning

Selamat pagi

How much is this?

Berapa harganya?

Help me

Tolong saya

Thank you!

Terima kasih

Sorry

Maaf

Where is the toilet?

Di manakah kamar kecil?

SPEAKERS

190

MILLION

speak Indonesian as a

first or second language