Languages of Indonesia

Languages of Indonesia
The Kedukan Bukit inscription (7th century CE), found in South Sumatra, is the oldest surviving specimen of the Old Malay language, which later evolved into various dialects across the archipelago, one of which was standardized into modern Indonesian.


Map of the distribution of traditional scripts in Indonesia.
OfficialIndonesian
Main
Regional
VernacularColloquial Indonesian (Bahasa Gaul)
Foreign
SignedIndonesian Sign Language
Keyboard layout

Indonesia is home to over 700 living languages spoken across its extensive archipelago. This significant linguistic variety constitutes approximately 10% of the world’s total languages, positioning Indonesia as the second most linguistically diverse nation globally, following Papua New Guinea. The majority of these languages belong to the Austronesian language family, prevalent in the western and central regions of Indonesia, including languages such as Acehnese, Sundanese, and Buginese. In contrast, the eastern regions, particularly Papua and the Maluku Islands, are home to more than 150 Papuan languages, which are distinct from the Austronesian family and represent a unique linguistic heritage. The language most widely spoken as a native language is Javanese, primarily by the Javanese people in the central and eastern parts of Java Island, as well as across many other islands due to migration.

Languages in Indonesia are classified into nine categories: national language, locally used indigenous languages, regional lingua francas, foreign and additional languages, heritage languages, languages in the religious domain, English as a lingua franca, and sign languages.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.