Unique Things About Bahasa Indonesia

Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian language is the official national language of the Republic of Indonesia. This language was a dialect of Melayu language that has undergone standardization process.

Mentioned as the language of unity in the Youth Congress in 28 October 1928, the language that used to be spoken by only small numbers of people in Indonesia, now, has become one of the ten most used language in the world. This is the result of the massive number of Indonesian citizens added more speakers from different countries in which Bahasa Indonesia is taught at schools and universities. Let’s see unique facts of the Indonesian language.

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1. Known by the ‘Wrong’ Name

Foreigners often use the word ‘bahasa’ to refer to Bahasa Indonesia. The expression, “I’m sorry I don’t speak ‘bahasa’,” is often heard. This is not the right term to refer to the official language of Indonesia. ‘Bahasa’ in English means ‘language’.

When one said, “I am sorry I don’t speak ‘bahasa’,” that means that he or she do not speak ‘language’. The expression then, does not make any sense because almost everyone at least master one language in order to communicate.

The funny thing is that some Indonesians think that it is OK and even cooler to refer to Bahasa Indonesia as ‘bahasa’. In the Indonesian dictionary ‘bahasa’ means communication system used by a certain community. Thus, the right term to refer to the official language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia.

2. Ranked 9 as the World most Spoken Language

As it has mentioned in the introduction, the Indonesian language is one of the ten most spoken languages around the world. One source mentioned that it is in the 9^th rank while another source mentioned that it is in the 8^th rank.

The Wikipedia in Indonesian language is the third most accessed Wikipedia in Asia. In the world, Wikipedia in Indonesian is in the 26^th position as the most accessed Wikipedia. Meanwhile, WordPress in Indonesian language is in the third position as the most accessed WordPress after English and Spanish WordPress sites.

3. One of the official languages in Vietnam

The Indonesian language together with English, France, and Japanese language are all the second official languages in Vietnam. It was declared as the one of the second official languages in Vietnam in 2007. Because it is declared as the second official language, bahasa Indonesia is officially taught in education institutions in Vietnam.

There are three universities which provide Bahasa Indonesia classes, those are Hong Bang University, HCMC National University dan the University of Social and Humanities in Vietnam.

4. A Popular Foreign Language in Australia

In 1994, there were about 50 schools in Australia that officially taught Bahasa Indoensia. Three years later, in 1997, the number was tripled. In 2016, there were more than 30,000 students in Australia who learned Bahasa Indonesia.

In some schools in Australia, the Indonesian language is one of the subjects that students are required to take. Bahasa Indonesia is also the second most learned foreign language in Australia after Italian.

5. Not the Main Language of Communication in Communities in the Past

Indonesia is an archipelago nation with various ethnic groups. A lot of those ethnic groups still practice their traditions and use their local languages as a language of communication in their communities. This happened even more before and early after the Republic of Indonesia declared its independence.

At those periods, there were many people who did not master Indonesian language. Then, the government required to use Indonesian language as the language of instructions at school and as official language in states departments and agencies.

As a result, families started to use more Indonesian language than their local languages. Those who mastered the Indonesian language were considered as more educated. That resulted to higher opportunity to get better jobs. Nowadays, the majority of Indonesians still master both their local languages and Indonesian.

However, as a result of globalization, those who would like to get good jobs are required to also master foreign languages especially English and Mandarin. As a result, families favor foreign languages to local languages. Still, as Indonesian language is an official language, we can say that most Indonesians are at least bilinguals.

6. Using more non-standard Version in Daily Conversation

There are more forms of non standard Indonesian to standard Indonesian in daily conversation. We can see the example of how non-standard Indonesian is used more often in the use of ‘nggak’ instead of ‘tidak’ which expresses negation.

In daily conversation, ‘nggak’ is more commonly used than ‘tidak’. Another example can be seen in the use of ‘banget’ which is the non-standard form of the word ‘sangat’ which means ‘very’. The standard form ‘sangat’ should be used as follows: ‘Bukunya sangat banyak’ (means ‘there are very many books’) instead of ‘bukunya banyak banget.’

The latter is the non-standard form. The sentence describes a situation where there are a lot of books. Another example of the use of non-standard Indonesian is the use of fillers from local languages. An example of this is the use of ‘teh’ in the middle of a sentence as in ‘Saya teh sudah biasa.’ (I am used to it). The filler ‘teh’ is mostly used by Sundanese speakers.

Meanwhile, there is also the word ‘mbok’ which is used by Javanese speakers. The word ‘mbok’ is not a filler, but just like a filler, this word could also be omitted. It is mostly used to begin a suggestion as in ‘Mbok dikurangi makan esnya, nanti sakit.’ (You should not drink too much iced drinks, otherwise you’ll get sick).

7. Not the Mother Tongue of One of Big Ethnic Groups in Indonesia

In a lot of countries where there are a lot of ethnic groups, the language chosen to be the official language is usually the language of one of the largest ethnic groups. We can see this in the Philippines where standardized Tagalog is used as the official language of the Philippines. Tagalog is the language of Tagalog ethnic group that makes up to 25% of the total population of the Philippines.

In Malaysia, the official language used is the standardized Malay language. This language is the local language of Malay ethnic group which makes up to 50% of the total population of Malaysia. This does not happen in Indonesia. The Indonesian language is from Malay language, the local language of Malay ethnic group which in total only about 8.8 million people in Indonesia. It is under 10% of the total population of Indonesia.

Standardized Malay was chosen and intentionally changed into Bahasa Indonesia to avoid language imperialism. Mohammad Tarbani Soerjowitjirto, a journalist, suggested the name ‘Bahasa Indonesia’ in the first youth congress. In a lot of his writing, M.Tarbani tirelessly proposed the idea to create our own language to unite the whole nation.

8. Easy to Learn

The Indonesian and Malay languages are two of the Asian languages which are easy to learn by those whose first language is English. According to the United States of America’s Foreign Language Institute, the Indonesian language is in category II. Languages in category II could be mastered within 36 weeks or around 900 hours. According to other sources, Bahasa Indonesia is easy to learn due to five main reasons.

First, it uses Roman alphabets which are used in most countries around the world. Second, Bahasa Indonesia is not a tonal language where one set of letters could mean a lot depending on the tones used to pronounce it.

Third, its structure is similar to English where a subject is followed by a verb and then an object. Fourth, there is no tense. Time reference will not change word forms. This is different from most European languages including English where the verbs change according to time reference.

Fifth, there is no gender reference for its noun. All nouns in Bahasa Indonesia are neutral. We do not need to memorize whether a certain noun is feminine or masculine. Gender is only used living being nouns and it does not change verb forms.

9. Once Brought to the Outer Space

In 1977, NASA launched a Voyager satellite to the outer space that brought a golden disc containing data of various languages, sounds, and music from many places around the world. The Indonesian language was one of the 55 languages that they sent to the outer space.

10. Standardized, Researched, and Developed by a Government Special Agency

Not all countries in the world has a special agency that creates standard and dictionary for that country’s official language. There is Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa (the Language Development and Fostering Agency of the Republic of Indonesia) under the ministry of education, culture, research and technology that continuously develops standard Indonesian words and dictionary.

Since its use for the first time as a unifying language, Indonesian language has undergone several changes. Those changes are mostly related to spelling system. Those who are above 60 years old might remember how the sound ‘i’ at the end of a word is written as ‘ie’.

Those who are part of 90s generation might remember how the first and second presidents of Indonesia’s names were written using ‘oe’ (Soekarno and Soeharto) which sounded ‘u’ (Sukarno and Suharto). The last spelling guide used is entitled Pedoman Umum Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia (General Guide of the Indonesian Language Spelling) shorten as PUEBI.

This guidance was released in 26 November 2015 replacing Pedoman Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan (The Guide for Perfected Spelling) that was used since 1972.

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