Indonesian

Indonesian is the national language of the Republic of Indonesia. When independence was declared in 1945, bahasa Indonesia ("Indo-nesian language") was decreed as the country's official language. Although it is the mother tongue of only about 20 million people out of a population of 200 million, it is estimated that as much as three-fourths of the population now understand it.

Indonesian is virtually the same language as Malay, the latter spoken in Malaysia. The principal difference was in the spelling up until 1972 when the spelling was made the same. The Indonesian system having been developed by the Dutch, the Malay by the British. Thus the Indonesian j is y in Malay (e.g., kaju—wood, Malay: kayu); Indonesian dj is j in Malay (gadjah—elephant, Malay: gajali); Indonesian tj is ch in Malay (kutjing—cat, Malay: kuching); and Indonesian sj is sh in Malay (sjarat—condition, Malay: sharat). The Indonesian plural, like the Malay, is formed by merely repeating the word, as in angan-angan in the poem below, which means "fantasies."