Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a modified form of the Malay language that was officially defined with the declaration of Indonesia's independence in 1945 although in the 1928 Indonesian Youth Pledge have declared it as the official language.Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world. Most formal education, as well as nearly all national media and other forms of communication, are conducted in Indonesian. In East Timor, which was an Indonesian province from 1975 to 1999, the Indonesian language is recognised by the constitution as one of the two working languages (the other is English, alongside the official languages of Tetum and Portuguese). The Indonesian name for the language is Bahasa Indonesia (lit. "the language of Indonesia"). This term can sometimes still be found in written or spoken English. In addition, the language is sometimes referred to as "Bahasa" by English-speakers, though this simply means "language" and thus is also not an official term for the Indonesian language.The language is spoken throughout Indonesia (and East Timor), although it is used most extensively as a first language in urban areas and usually as a second or third language in more rural parts of Indonesia. It is also spoken by an additional 1.5+ million people worldwide, particularly in the Netherlands, the Philippines and Malaysia. Also spoken as daily language in some parts of Australia , Brunei, Singapore, some parts of Thailand ( Southern Thailand ), East Timor, Saudi Arabia, Suriname, New Caledonia.Because of its origins, Indonesian (in its most standard form) is mutually intelligible with the official Malaysian Malay. However, it does differ from Malaysian Malay in some aspects, with differences in pronunciations, dictions, spellings, accents and vocabularies. These differences are mainly due to the Dutch and Javanese influences on Indonesian. |