ABOUT INDONESIAN LANGUAGE

Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries.

Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world. Of its large population the number of people who fluently speak Indonesian is fast approaching 100%, thus making Indonesian one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.[2] Most Indonesians, aside from speaking the national language, are often fluent in another regional language (examples include Chinese Languages) which are commonly used at home and within the local community. Most formal education, as well as nearly all national media and other forms of communication, are conducted in Indonesian. In East Timor, which was an Indonesian province from 1975 to 1999, Indonesian is recognised by the constitution as one of the two working languages (the other is English, alongside the official languages of Tetum and Portuguese).

The Indonesian name for the language is Bahasa Indonesia (literally "the language of Indonesia"). This term can sometimes still be found in written or spoken English. In addition, the language is sometimes referred to as "Bahasa" by English speakers, though this simply means "language" and thus does not specifically designate the Indonesian language.
To a certain degree, Indonesian can be regarded as an open language. Over the years, foreign languages such as Sanskrit, Chinese, Persian, Portuguese, Dutch and English have influenced and expanded the Indonesian language, mostly through trade contacts and international media.

Because of its semi-open status, there are those[3] who regard Indonesian (as well as other forms of Malay) as lacking sufficient vocabulary and specialist terminologies. Yet some linguists consider this view to be a misconception,[2] as a vast majority of foreign adopted words do have native equivalents. For example, the word asimilasi (from the Dutch word assimilatie) can also be expressed in Indonesian as penggabungan. Many words describing more modern inventions, objects or ideas are often Indonesianised adoptions of foreign words (e.g. computer becomes komputer), although many of these words also have Indonesian equivalents. For example, a "cell/mobile phone" can be referred to in Indonesian as either pon-sel/ telepon seluler (lit. cellular-telephone), HP (pronounced hah-péh - the acronymic form of hand phone) or telepon genggam (lit. "hold-in-the-hand telephone"). Other words such as "rice cooker" may be referred to simply as "rice cooker" or, again, in a more native Indonesian/ Malay form, i.e. penanak nasi (a word formed from the verb menanak, meaning 'to cook rice by boiling' + nasi, meaning 'cooked rice'). Overall, the use of native and non-native words in Indonesian is equally common and reflects the country's efforts towards modernization and globalization.

Many aspects of Indonesian grammar are relatively simple in the initial stages of study, making it one of the easiest languages to learn for adults[4]. Indonesian does not require conjugation of verb tenses or participles, plural forms, articles and gender distinction for the third person pronouns. It is important to note that neither do many other languages traditionally regarded as 'complex', including Chinese (see Chinese grammar) and Thai for example. In spite of this, Indonesian and Malay are generally regarded as easy languages to learn, mostly because they are not tonal languages and they no longer use complex characters within their writing system, but rather utilize the Latin alphabet. Similar cases can also be seen in other Southeast Asian languages such as Vietnamese and Tagalog.

However, Indonesian does possess a complex system of affixations. The absence of tenses in the language is replaced by the use of aspect particles and (as with any language) Indonesian grammar often presents an array of exceptions. Also, the simplicity of Indonesian grammar at a beginners or basic level has the disadvantage of misleading many learners of the language into thinking that more advanced Indonesian grammar is just as simple.[3]

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