Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Indonesia has more than 700 languages.. Except for the Papuan languages spoken in West Papua and immigrant languages such as Chinese and Arab as the language of the Koran, the languages spoken in Indonesia belong to the Malay-Polynesian group of the western group of the Austronesian family.
The official language is - Bahasa Indonesia but the people speak their own regional language.
Indonesian is a normative form of the Malay language, an Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian) language which had been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries. It 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. Because of its origins, Indonesian (in its most standard form) is mutually intelligible with the official Malaysian form of Malay. However, it does differ from Malaysian in some aspects, with differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. These differences are mainly due to the Dutch and Javanese influences on Indonesian.
Whilst Indonesian is spoken as a mother tongue (first language) by only a small proportion of Indonesia's large population (i.e. mainly those who reside within the vicinity of Jakarta), cumulatively, well over 200 million people regularly make use of the national language - some with varying degrees of proficiency. In a nation which boasts more than 300 native languages and a vast array of ethnic groups, the use of proper or 'good and correct' Indonesian (as opposed to Indonesian slang or regional dialects) is an essential means of communication across the archipelago. Use of the national language is abundant in the media, government bodies, schools, universities, workplaces, amongst some members of the Indonesian upper-class or nobility and also in many other more formal situations
The language is spoken throughout Indonesia (and East Timor), although it is used most extensively as a first language in urban areas and usually as a second language in more rural parts of Indonesia. It is also spoken by an additional 1.5+ million people worldwide, particularly in the Netherlands, the Philippines and Malaysia and some parts of Southern Thailand, Brunei, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Australia and the United States. (to be continued) (J.M.) (Agenzia Fides 11/7/2007 - righe 32, parole 414)
