A language of many speakers

A language of many speakers

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post/Manila

A Filipino journalist Marian Trinidad was surprized when her
classmate, a Malaysian Indian, Derrick V, spoke with Indonesian
Edi Utama, not in English but in Malay/Indonesian.

"It was quite amazing for me to see an Indian guy
understanding an Indonesian guy, in Bahasa (Indonesia)," Marian
told her two classmates.

"Our language, Bahasa Indonesia comes from the same roots as
Bahasa Melayu (Malay)," Edi told her.

Marian was even more surprised after realizing that her
language, Tagalog, also had words in common.

Words like kanan (right), mata (eyes), payong (umbrella),
pinto (door) are identical or similar to Indonesian words.

Indonesian comes directly from the language of the Malays,
Bahasa Melayu, an Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian language that
has been lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for
centuries.

The nation's founding fathers realized that Malay, now the
national language of Malaysia, was widely spoken across the
archipelago and could play a crucial role in uniting the many
ethnic groups here if it became a national language.

In the build-up to independence, the National Youth Congress
in October 1928 declared Malay just that. However, it was not
some time until after Indonesia declared independence in 1945
that the Indonesian form of Malay started to be taught in
schools.

Indonesian in many practical terms is almost the same as
Malay, however there are some marked differences in vocabulary
and pronunciation that have resulted from the Dutch and Javanese
influences on the language.

Some 200 million people speak Indonesian, with the number
estimated to increase to about 300 million if Malay is included.

The languages are spoken by people living in Indonesia,
Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, East Timor, and in southern Thailand
and the Philippines.

In comparison, around 1.3 billion people speak seven Chinese
dialects; 750 million people speak English and some 500 million
people speak Hindi.

Language expert Alwi Hasan in his conference paper in 1995
said Indonesian as a foreign language was taught in at least 29
countries, including Australia, the United States and Britain,
and also in other countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and
Africa.

Many linguists say the language with its lack of verb-tenses,
prepositions and its simple structure is a comparatively easy
language to learn, with people being able to master basic
conversations after a few weeks of study. However, regional
dialects, slang and the mixing in of other languages like
Javanese, Sundanese and Batak, make it often hard for foreign
learners to understand what they hear.