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Indonesian language
*** Shopping-Tip: Indonesian language
{{Infobox Language
|name=Indonesian
|nativename=Bahasa Indonesia
|familycolor=Austronesian
|states=
Indonesia,
East Timor,
Suriname{{fact}}
|region=
Indonesia,
Malaysia,
East Timor,
Suriname
|speakers=17–30 million native
200 million+ total
|rank=56
|fam2=
Malayo-Polynesian languages Malayo-Polynesian
|fam3=
Western Malayo-Polynesian languages Western
|fam4=
Sundic languages Sundic
|fam5=
Malayic languages Malayic
|fam6=
Malayan language Malayan
|fam7=
Local Malay languages Local Malay
|nation=
Indonesia
|agency=
Pusat Bahasa
|iso1=id|iso2=ind|iso3=ind}}
'''Indonesian''' ('''''Bahasa Indonesia''''') is the official language of
Indonesia. Indonesian is a
standard language standardized dialect of the
Malay language that was officially defined with the declaration of Indonesian independence in 1945, and the two languages remain quite similar.
The language is spoken fluently as a
second language by most Indonesians, who use a regional language (examples are
Minangkabau language Minangkabau and
Javanese language Javanese) at home and in their local community. Most formal education, as well as nearly all national media and other communication, are in Indonesian.
The Indonesian name for the language is ''Bahasa Indonesia'' (literally ''language of Indonesia''); this name is sometimes used in
English language English as well. The term "Bahasa" on its own is not a correct name for the language, as this simply means "language".
History
Bahasa Indonesia 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, and 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. It is very similar to the official
Malaysian form of the language. However it does
Differences between Malay and Indonesian differ from the Malaysian form in some ways, with differences in pronunciation and also in vocabulary, due in large part to the many Dutch words in the Indonesian vocabulary.
It is spoken as a mother tongue by only 7% of the population of Indonesia, but altogether almost 200 million people speak it, with varying degrees of proficiency. It is an essential means of communication in a region with more than 300 native languages, used for business and administrative purposes, at all levels of education and in all mass media.
However, most native Indonesian speakers would admit that the standard correct version of the language is hardly ever used in a normal daily conversation. One can read standard correct Indonesian in books and newspaper, or listen to it when watching the news on television, but few native Indonesian speakers use formally correct language in their daily conversations. While this is a phenomenon common to most languages in the world (for example, spoken English does not always correspond to written standards), the degree of "correctness" of spoken Indonesian (in terms of grammar and vocabulary) by comparison to its written form is noticeably low. This is mostly due to the fact that most Indonesians tend to mix aspects of their own local dialects (Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, and even Chinese) with Indonesian when speaking, which results in the creation of various types of accented Indonesian, the very types that a foreigner is most likely to hear upon arriving in any Indonesian city or town. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the use of
Indonesian slang language slang, particularly in the cities. A classic example of a speaker of accented Indonesian is former president
Soeharto, whose Javanese dialect came through whenever he delivered a speech.
The
Netherlands Dutch colonization left an imprint on the language that can be seen in words such as ''polisi'' (police), ''kualitas'' (quality), ''telepon'' (telephone), ''bis'' (bus), ''kopi'' (coffee), ''rokok'' (cigarette), ''universitas'' (university), ''kantor'' (office), ''wortel'' (carrot), ''wastafel'' (washbasin), and ''resleting'' (zipper). There are also some words derived from
Portuguese language Portuguese (''sabun'', soap; ''meja'', table; ''jendela'', window; ''mentega'', butter; ''tenda'', tent, and ''gereja'', church),
Chinese language Chinese (''pisau'', knife or dagger; ''loteng'', [upper] floor),
Hindi language Hindi (''kaca'', mirror) and from
Arabic language Arabic (''khusus'', special; ''maaf'', sorry; ''selamat ...'', a greeting; ''kursi'', chair). There are also words derived from
Javanese language Javanese (''aku'', I ''(informal)'', and its derivative form ''mengaku'', confess).
See also
List of borrowed words in Indonesian
Classification
Indonesian is part of the
Western Malayo-Polynesian languages Western Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the
Malayo-Polynesian languages Malayo-Polynesian branch of the
Austronesian languages. According to the
Ethnologue, Indonesian is modeled after the Riau
Malay language Malay spoken in northeast
Sumatra.
Geographic distribution
Indonesian is spoken throughout Indonesia (and
East Timor), although it is used most extensively in urban areas, and less so in the rural parts of Indonesia.
Official status
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia.
Sounds
Here are a few useful tips for the learner:
* k, p, and t are unaspirated, ie they are not followed by a noticeable puff of air as they often are in English words.
* t and d are
dental consonant dental
* When k is at the end of a syllable it becomes a
glottal stop, which sounds like it is cut off sharply e.g. "baik", "bapak". This is similar to a number of English dialects where the final t is glottalized ("got", "what"). Only a few Indonesian words have this sound in the middle, e.g. "bakso" (meatballs), and it may be represented by an apostrophe in Arabic derived words such as "Al Qur'an".
* Stress is placed on the
penult penultimate (second-last) syllable of each base word. But if this syllable contains a schwa then the accent moves to the last syllable.
For more, and to listen to examples, see [http://www.seasite.niu.edu/flin/pronunciation/guide_to_pronunciation_of_indone.htm SEASite Guide to Pronunciation of Indonesian]
Phonology
The following are phonemes of modern Indonesian.
{| class="wikitable"
|+'''Vowels'''
|-
!
!Front
!Central
!Back
|-
!Close
|{{IPA|iË?}}
|{{IPA|}}
|{{IPA|uË?}}
|-
!Close-mid
|{{IPA|e}}
|{{IPA|É™}}
|{{IPA|o}}
|-
!Open-mid
|{{IPA|(É›)}}
|{{IPA|}}
|{{IPA|(É”)}}
|-
!Open
|{{IPA|a}}
|
|
|}
Indonesian also has the
diphthongs {{IPA|/ai/}} and {{IPA|/au/}}
{| class="wikitable"
|+'''Consonants'''
!
!Labial
!Apical
!Postalveolar
!Palatal
!Velar
!Glottal
|-
! Nasal
| {{IPA|m}}
| {{IPA|n}}
|
| {{IPA|ɲ}}
| {{IPA|Å‹}}
|
|-
! Plosive
| {{IPA|p b}}
| {{IPA|t d}}
|
|
| {{IPA|k g}}
| {{IPA|Ê”}}
|-
! Affricate
|
|
| {{IPA|ʧ}} {{IPA|ʤ}}
|
|
|
|-
! Fricative
| {{IPA|(f)}}
| {{IPA|s (z)}}
| {{IPA|(ʃ)}}
|
| {{IPA|(x)}}
| {{IPA|h}}
|-
! Liquid
|
| {{IPA|l r}}
|
|
|
|
|-
! Approximant
| {{IPA|w}}
|
|
|{{IPA| j}}
|
|
|}
''Note:'' The vowels between parentheses are allophones while the consonants in parentheses are ''loan phonemes'' and as such only occur in
loanwords.
Grammar
Compared to European languages, Indonesian has a strikingly small use of
grammatical gender grammatically gendered words; the same word is used for ''he'' and ''she'' or for ''his'' and ''her''. Most of the words that refer to people (family terms, professions, etc.) have a form that does not distinguish between the sexes; for example, ''adik'' can both refer to a younger sibling of either gender; no distinction is made between ''girlfriend'' and ''boyfriend''. In order to specify gender, an adjective has to be added: ''adik laki-laki'' corresponds to ''brother'' but really means ''male younger sibling''. There is no word like the English ''man'' that can refer both to a male person and to a human being in general. (The word ''orang'', person, doesn't carry an alternative, specifically "male" meaning.)
''Note'': There are some words that are gendered, for instance ''putri'' means ''daughter'', and ''putra'' means ''son''; words like these are usually absorbed from other languages (in these cases, from
Sanskrit through the Old
Javanese language Javanese language). In Jakarta and some other areas, ''abang'' may be used for ''older brother''; ''kakak'' (''older sibling'') is then used to mean ''older sister''.
Plurals are expressed by means of
reduplication, but only when the plural is not implied by the context. Thus ''person'' is ''orang'', and ''people'' is ''orang-orang'', but ''one thousand people'' is ''seribu orang'', as the numeral makes it unnecessary to mark the plural form (reduplication also has many other functions).
There are two forms of ''we'', ''kami'' or ''kita'', depending on whether you are including the person being talked to. ''kami'' is used when the other person(s) is not included, while ''kita'' includes the opposite party. Their usage is increasingly confused in colloquial Indonesian.
The basic word order is
Subject Verb Object SVO. Verbs are not
inflected language inflected for person or number, and there are no tenses; tense is denoted by time adverbs (such as ''yesterday'') or by other tense indicators, such as ''sudah'', meaning ''already''. On the other hand, there is a complex system of verb affixes to render nuances of meaning and denote active-passive voices. Such affixes include prefixes, infixes, suffixes, and their combinations; all of which are often ignored in daily conversations.
Vocabulary
Indonesian as a modern dialect of Malay has borrowed heavily from many languages, among others:
Sanskrit,
Arabic language Arabic,
Portuguese language Portuguese,
Dutch language Dutch, Chinese and many other languages, including other
Austronesian languages. It is estimated that there are some 750 Sanskrit loanwords in modern Indonesian, 21,000 Arabic (Persian and some Hebrew) ones, some 25 Portuguese (also
Spanish language Spanish and
Italian language Italian) ones and a staggering number of some 10,000 loanwords from Dutch.{{fact}} The latter also comprises many words from other European languages, which came via Dutch, the so-called "International Vocabulary". The vast majority of Indonesian words, however, come from the root lexical stock of its Austronesian heritage.
Although
Hinduism and
Buddhism are no longer the major religions of Indonesia,
Sanskrit which was the language vehicle for these religions, is still held in high esteem and is comparable with the status of
Latin in
English language English and other West European languages. Residents of
Bali and
Java (island) Java tend to be particularly proud of the Hindu-Buddhist heritage. Sanskrit is also the main source for
neologism neologisms. These are usually formed from Sanskrit roots. The loanwords from Sanskrit cover many aspects of religion, art and everyday lives. The Sanskrit influence came from contacts with India long ago from the beginning of the Common Era. The words are either directly borrowed from India or with the intermediary of the Old Javanese language. In the classical language of Java, Old Javanese, the number of Sanskrit loanwords is far greater. The Old Javanese — English dictionary by prof.
P.J. Zoetmulder,
Society of Jesus S.J. (1982) contains no fewer than 25,500 entries. Almost half are Sanskrit loanwords. Unlike other loanwords, Sanskrit loanwords have entered the basic vocabulary of Indonesian, so by many these aren't felt as foreign anymore.
The loanwords from
Arabic language Arabic are mainly concerned with religion, in particular with
Islam, as can be expected. Many early
Bible translators, when they came across some unusual
Hebrew language Hebrew words or proper names, used the Arabic cognates. In the newer translations this practice is discontinued. They now turn to
Greek language Greek names or use the original Hebrew Word. For example, the name Jesus was initially translated as '''Isa'', but is now spelt as ''Yesus''. Psalms used to be translated as ''Zabur'', the Arabic name, but now it is called ''Mazmur'' which corresponds more with Hebrew.
The
Portuguese language Portuguese loans are common words, which were mainly, connected with articles the early European traders and explorers brought to Southeast Asia. The Portuguese were among the first westerners who sailed east to the "
Spice Islands".
The
Chinese language Chinese loanwords are usually concerned with cuisine, trade or often just exclusively things Chinese. There is a considerable Chinese presence in the whole of Southeast Asia. According to the Indonesian government, the relative number of people of Chinese descent in Indonesia is ''only'' 3.5%. Whether this is true or not is still a matter of debate, many think the number is much higher. But what is sure is that in urban centres the number can be as high as between 10–25%.
The former colonial power, the
Netherlands, left an impressive vocabulary. These
Dutch language Dutch loanwords, and also from other non Italo-Iberian, European languages loanwords which came via Dutch, cover all aspects of life. Some Dutch loanwords, having clusters of several consonants, pose difficulties to speakers of Indonesian. This problem is usually solved by insertion of the
schwa. For example Dutch ''schroef'' {{IPA|['sxruf]}}=> ''sekrup'' {{IPA|[sÉ™'krup]}}.
As modern Indonesian draws many of its words from foreign sources, there are many
synonyms. For example, Indonesian has three words for '''book''', i.e. ''pustaka'' (from Sanskrit), ''kitab'' (from Arabic) and ''buku'' (from Dutch). These words have, as can be expected, slightly different meanings. A ''pustaka'' is often connected with ancient wisdom or sometimes with esoteric knowledge. A derived form, ''perpustakaan'' means a library. A kitab is usually a religious scripture or a book containing moral guidances. The Indonesian word for the
Bible is ''Alkitab'', thus directly derived from Arabic. The book containing the penal code is also called the ''kitab''. ''Buku'' is the most common word for books.
In addition to those above, there are also direct borrowings from various languages in the world, such as "karaoke" from Japanese, and "modem" from English.
See also
List of borrowed words in Indonesian
Spoken & informal Indonesian
In spoken Indonesian, the ''ai'' on the end of base words is typically pronounced as {{IPA|/e/}}.{{fact}} In informal writing (personal communication and "trendy" magazines and newspapers) the spelling of such words is modified to reflect the actual pronunciation. E.g.: ''capai'' becomes ''cape'' or ''capek'', ''pakai'' become ''pake'', ''kalau'' becomes ''kalo''.{{fact}}
In verbs, the ''me-'' prefixes are often dropped, although the transformed initial vowel is usually retained.{{fact}}
Writing system
Indonesian is written using the
Latin alphabet. It is more
phonetically consistent than many languages—the correspondence between sounds and their written forms is generally regular.
Consonants are represented in a way similar to
Italian language#Writing System Italian. Although
is always {{IPA|/ʧ/}}, is always {{IPA|/g/}} and represents {{IPA|/ʤ/}} as it does in English. In addition, represents {{IPA|/ɲ/}}, is used for the velar nasal {{IPA|/ŋ/}} (which can occur word-initially), for {{IPA|/ʃ/}} and for {{IPA|/x/}}. Both {{IPA|/e/}} and {{IPA|/ə/}} are represented with an .
One common source of confusion for foreign readers, particularly when reading place names, is the spelling changes in the language that have occurred since Indonesian independence. Commonly-used changes include:
{| class="wikitable"
!Old
spelling!!New
spelling
|-align="center"
|oe||u
|-align="center"
|tj||c
|-align="center"
|dj||j
|-align="center"
|j||y
|-align="center"
|nj||ny
|-align="center"
|sj||sy
|-align="center"
|ch||kh
|}
The first of these changes (''oe'' to ''u'') occurred around the time of independence in 1947; all of the others were a part of an officially-mandated spelling reform in 1972. Some of the old spellings, which were more closely derived from the Dutch language, do survive in proper names; for example, the name of a former president of the Indonesia is still sometimes written ''Suharto Soeharto'', and the central Java city of Yogyakarta is sometimes written ''Jogjakarta''.
See also
* Common phrases in different languages
* Language families and languages
* Demographics of Indonesia
* Indonesian slang language
* Differences between Malay and Indonesian
* Indonesian Swadesh list Swadesh list of Indonesian words
External links
{{InterWiki|code=id}}
{{Wikibookspar||Indonesian}}
* {{wikitravelphrasebook|Indonesian phrasebook}}
- Learning Indonesian in 7 Days (SEAsite)
- Free online resources for learners
- Indonesia-English dictionary in one page (SEAsite) (can save to disk)
- Indonesian dictionary (All free dictionaries)
- Ethnologue report for Indonesian
- English to Indonesian translations
- Indonesia-Dutch dictionary
- Online translator
Category:Malayo-Polynesian languagesCategory:Languages of Indonesiacategory:Indonesian language *
Category:Austronesian languages
bg:ИндонезийÑ?ки език
br:Bahasa Indonesia
ca:Indonesi
de:Bahasa Indonesia
es:Idioma indonesio
eo:Indonezia lingvo
fa:زبان اندونزیایی
fr:Indonésien
he:×?×™× ×“×•× ×–×™×ª
ko:��네시아어
id:Bahasa Indonesia
it:Lingua indonesiana
kw:Indonesek
ms:Bahasa Indonesia
nl:Indonesisch
no:Bahasa Indonesia
ja:インド�シア語
pl:Język indonezyjski
pt:LÃngua indonésia
ru:ИндонезийÑ?кий Ñ?зык
simple:Bahasa Indonesia
fi:Indonesian kieli
th:ภาษาà¸à¸´à¸™à¹‚ดนีเซีย
tr:Endonezyaca
zh:å?°å°¼è¯
Category:Malayo-Polynesian languages
Category:Languages of Indonesia
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