Indonesian

Indonesian, or Bahasa Indonesia, is the official language of the Republic of Indonesia and the most widely used language in the country. It functions as the national language, a lingua franca that unites Indonesia’s many ethnic groups, and it is used in education, government, media, and public life.

Indonesian is a standardized variety of Malay and is part of the Austronesian language family, in the Malayic sub-branch. It is closely related to Malay spoken in Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, but has its own formal standard in Indonesia.

The language developed from Malay, a lingua franca of trade in maritime Southeast Asia. It was chosen as the basis for the national language during Indonesia’s independence era, with standardization in the mid-20th century. The 1928 Sumpah Pemuda pledge helped promote Indonesian as a symbol of national unity.

Indonesian is analytic in its grammar, with little inflection. Grammatical relations are expressed largely through word order and function words, rather than agreement. Verbs use affixes to derive voice and aspect, although there is no grammatical gender. The language is written with a Latin script known as the Indonesian alphabet.

Its vocabulary includes many loanwords from Dutch, Sanskrit, Arabic, Portuguese, Chinese, and English, alongside native Malay roots. There are regional dialects and varieties, but the standard form is taught in schools and used in formal settings. Indonesian serves as a unifying language in a linguistically diverse nation.