Indonesian is a Malay language based on Riau dialect and the official language of Indonesia. About 30 million people in the world use Indonesian as their mother tongue, and about 65.438+0.4 billion people use Indonesian as their second language, so they can read and speak Indonesian skillfully.
Indonesian is spoken all over Indonesia, and many people in the Netherlands, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and the United States also use Indonesian. In order to unify with written Malay, 1972, the Indonesian government introduced the accurate pinyin (Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan) based on the Malay spelling system, which makes the spelling of Indonesian and Malay very close now.
In terms of language classification, Indonesian belongs to Malay-Polynesian language family. Indonesian originated from Malay in the northeast of Sumatra, which is a regional variant of the language and has more than 80% homology with standard Malay. Before 1972, there was a great difference in spelling between Indonesian and Malay, because the spelling system of Indonesian was invented by the Dutch before 1972, and that of Malay was invented by the British. In order to unify written Indonesian and Malay, in 1972, the Indonesian government introduced the accurate pinyin (Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan) based on the Malay spelling system, which made the spelling of Indonesian very close to Malay. Both Malay and Indonesian use Latin letters, which are single-byte characters. Compared with western European languages, Indonesian has a very simple grammar.
The official Indonesian language is Bahasa (Bahasa means "language" in Indonesian). There are more than 300 dialects in Indonesia's population of 230 million. Some elderly Indonesians can speak some Dutch, and they also use English in business, sightseeing and education.
Basically, the difference between Malay and Indonesian is based on political reasons, not linguistic considerations. People who use these two languages can basically communicate with each other, although many words are not necessarily the same. However, it is worth noting that many Malay dialects are not completely interoperable. For example, for many Malays, it is difficult for them to understand the pronunciation of Kelantan. In addition, there are many unique words in Javanese Malay in Java, Indonesia, and even Malays who are familiar with Malay cannot fully understand the meaning of these words.
The difference between Malay and Indonesian can be compared to the difference between British English and American English. People who use these two languages can basically communicate with each other, but there are some differences between pinyin and vocabulary in writing system. The main reason for this difference is that Indonesian borrowed many words from Javanese and Dutch. For example, the Malay word for "post office" is "pejabat pos", but the Indonesian word for "post office" is "kantor pos", which is a word borrowed from the Dutch word "kantor" and the Dutch word "office".
Before the 20th century, because most Malays believed in Islam, they used an improved Arabic alphabet writing system called "Jawi" to write. Later, another Latin alphabet writing system called Rumi gradually replaced the original position of Jawi in daily life. The difference in writing systems between Malaysia and Indonesia actually reflects the different colonial governments that ruled the two places at that time-the British colonial government.
Pictures of advanced courses in Indonesia
Dutch East India Company.
In Indonesian, the vowel in the English word "moon" is written as "oe" according to the Dutch custom. When Japan occupied Indonesia, the vowel was changed to "u" by the Japanese colonial government (therefore, the name of Su Jianuo, the first president of Indonesia, was changed from Su Jianuo to Su Jianuo). Similarly, before 1972, the English consonant "chin" was written as "tj" in Indonesian, although it was represented by "ch" in Malay. So "grandson" is written as "chuchu" in Malay, but it is written as "tjoetjoe" in Indonesian.
This situation did not change until 1972. Due to Indonesia's "Ejaan Yang Disempurnakan (accurate pinyin; With the publication of Perfect Spelling, these differences in writing systems between Malay and Indonesian show signs of narrowing. For example, the Malay word "ch" and the Indonesian word "tj" were changed to "c", so "grandson" became "cucu". In addition, Indonesian no longer uses "dj" but "J" which has been adopted in Malay, so the spelling of Jakarta has changed from "Djakarta" to "jakarta". The "J" (the first pronunciation of "young" in English), which was originally reserved in Indonesian, was also replaced by the "Y" in Malay.
Although the writing systems of Malay and Indonesian are almost unified, due to some historical reasons, there are still some differences in vocabulary between the two languages. For example, "money" is written as "wang" in Malay, but "uang" in Indonesian.