INDONESIAN LANGUAGE

General Introduction

Indonesian is a form of Malay, spoken in Indonesia. more...

Fauzan Helmi Sudaryanto has demonstrated that you don’t have to leave your house to protect Indonesia’s heritage.

The 16-year-old high school student has developed an online dictionary of traditional Indonesian languages. He told the Jakarta Globe that his project, Kardinal (www.kamus-tradisional.web.id), stands for “kamus tradisional online,” or online traditional dictionary.

“I surfed the Net and found very few references for traditional languages,” Fauzan said, adding that he first started to develop the dictionary with Kawi language, a branch of ancient Javanese, which now has entries of more than 450 words with English and Indonesian translations. more...

The ACT Department of Education and Training (DET), the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn Catholic Education Office have pledged to provide 24,000 Australia dollars to support Indonesian language teaching assistants, an Indonesian government official said.

"This funding will do much to improve the quality of Bahasa Indonesia teaching in the ACT," Education and Cultural Attache of the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra, Dr.Aris Junaidi, told ANTARA on Thursday (28/05).

In 2008, the Indonesian embassy and DET worked together to run a pilot program where Indonesian native-speakers were assigned to four ACT schools to assist their Indonesian language teaching classes. more...

The word bahasa means language. Bahasa Indonesia means 'Indonesian language'. It's the national language of the Republic of Indonesia. Although only 60 years old in terms of its political independence, Indonesia is an old country historically and culturally, and Indonesian (or more correctly its predecessor, Malay) has been around for quite a few hundred years.

Indonesia's national motto is Bhinneka Tunggal Ika which means Unity in Diversity, reflecting the country's enormous cultural diversity - some 250 to 300 different ethnic groups, each with their own distinct languages (not dialects).

These local languages (or bahasa daerah, meaning 'regional language') are mostly used in the home, or in the village, between members of the same ethnic group, but for communication with outsiders, Indonesians use their national language, 'bahasa Indonesia', or Indonesian. more...

Although some 250 million people speak Indonesian, the language's global importance is often downplayed.

Indonesians might also think the same.

However, top US universities including the University of California-Berkeley still offer Indonesian language courses, proof that the language is quite influential.

Other universities such as Cornell, Yale, Stanford, University of California-Los Angeles, University of Texas-Austin, University of Colorado-Boulder, Northern Illinois, University of Hawaii -Honolulu, Arizona State University, Ohio University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Michigan-Ann Harbor also offer Indonesian language courses. more...

Languages and dialects spoken and written over the whole of the Indonesian archipelago, 200 to 350 in number, are usualy clasified according to the above mentioned ethnic denominations. The main district local languages of Indonenesia are among others: the Acehnese, Batak, Sundanese, Javanese, Sasak, Tetum of Timor, Dayak, Minahasa, Toraja, Buginese, Halmahera, Ambonese, Ceramese, several Irianese languages and other such languages. In between these languages there exist many other different dialects.

Indonesian or Bahasa Indonesia, based on the Riau version of Malay language, was declared the official language with the declaration of Indonesia's independence in 1945, following the 1928 "unifying language" declaration in the Indonesian Youth Pledge. more...