It is not known exactly how many people claim Indonesian to be their first language. Most Indonesians are bilingual, and many are proficient in as many as three or four languages or dialects. Most people learn at least one of the country’s many local languages at home, and later learn Indonesian at school. Indonesian tends to be used in larger urban areas, while local languages are more widely used in small towns and rural areas.

Indonesian is the official language of government administration. It is the medium of instruction at all levels of education, although English textbooks are used to teach specialized university courses. It is the dominant language of the country’s mass media.

Domestic Television programs are entirely in Indonesian, and almost all programs of foreign origin are subtitled or dubbed into Indonesian. It is also the language of literature and popular culture such as TV melodramas and comedy, pop novels, popular songs, cartoons and comics.

During the time Indonesia was a Dutch colony, the Latin alphabet was introduced to write Indonesian and a number of Dutch spellings were used. This alphabet was called ejaan lama (Old Script) in Indonesian.

In the 1930s, as part of the independence movement, the Indonesian language was standardised and the term Bahasa Indonesia was adopted as the name of the language. In 1947 the spelling of oe was changed to u. Then in 1972 a set of official changes to the Indonesian spelling system were introduced by former president Soeharto.

The Indonesian Language is a post from: Learn Foreign Languages

Related posts:

1. How to Learn Korean Language The Korean language is spoken by more than 70 million...