Indonesianlanguage

Indonesian language, commonly known as Bahasa Indonesia, is the official language of Indonesia and the most widely spoken language in the country. It functions as a national lingua franca among Indonesia’s diverse ethnic groups and is used in education, media, government, and commerce.

Bahasa Indonesia is a standardized register of Malay, descended from the Malay languages historically used in trade in the Riau archipelago and coastal Sumatra. It was adopted as the national language in the wake of Indonesia’s independence in 1945. Its written form uses the Latin alphabet, with spelling standardized through late 20th-century reforms.

The language coexists with hundreds of regional languages and dialects; many Indonesians are bilingual or multilingual. Standard Indonesian is used in formal contexts, while informal varieties blend with local languages in everyday speech. The vocabulary has borrowed extensively from Sanskrit, Arabic, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, and English, among others.

Indonesian grammar is analytic and relatively simple: words do not inflect for person or tense; tense and aspect are indicated by particles and context. The typical word order is subject–verb–object. Pronouns include saya or aku for 'I', kamu or Anda for 'you'; inclusive kita and exclusive kami distinguish listener inclusion. The language has no grammatical gender. Spelling and pronunciation prefer a consistent Latin-based system; Indonesian is widely taught as a second language across the region and is mutually intelligible with Malay variants used in Malaysia and Brunei, though there are lexical differences.