Bahasa Indonesia

The Indonesian language

Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Locally it is Bahasa Indonesia, "the Indonesian language" — and calling it simply "Bahasa" is wrong, since bahasa only means "language". In English, call it Indonesian. It is the first language of many city dwellers, especially in Jakarta, but in smaller towns and villages it is usually a second language sitting behind the regional tongue: Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, and hundreds of others. Spend time in East Java or Bali and do not be surprised if the conversation around you is not Indonesian at all. It hardly matters. Indonesian is the lingua franca of the archipelago, and almost everyone speaks it — the 2020 census found more than 97 per cent of Indonesians fluent.

The language was pledged as the national tongue in the 1928 Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Pledge) and made the official state language at independence in 1945. It grew out of Malay, the trade lingua franca of the Malacca Strait, which is why it stays close to the Malay of Malaysia and Singapore; Javanese and Dutch account for most of the divergence. With Indonesia's population now near 288 million (the Home Affairs civil register put it at 288.3 million at the end of 2025), and something like 260 to 300 million speakers once second-language learners are counted, Indonesian sits comfortably among the ten most-spoken languages on Earth. Its standing is rising: in November 2023 it became the tenth official language of the UNESCO General Conference. It is not, despite the occasional claim, an official language of ASEAN — English remains ASEAN's sole working language.

Most foreign residents find Indonesian easy to pick up. The syntax is simple, the core vocabulary small, and the Latin spelling largely phonetic. The catch is that the Indonesian in textbooks is not the Indonesian on the street. Formal written Indonesian, used in literature and much of the media, is markedly more complex than everyday speech, which runs on regional dialect (the Betawi of Jakarta above all), slang (nggak for tidak, gue and lu for "I" and "you"), and the national love of abbreviation. A primary school, sekolah dasar, becomes SD ("ess-day"); corruption, collusion and nepotism (korupsi, kolusi, nepotisme) becomes KKN; a shophouse from rumah and toko is a ruko; and cheap spirits, from minuman keras, are miras.

Indonesian borrows freely. Dutch supplies much of the modern vocabulary, such as kulkas (refrigerator); Portuguese gave gereja (church) and Minggu (Sunday); Chinese the kitchen words pisau, mie and cawan (knife, noodles, teacup); Sanskrit the lofty bumi, manusia and agama (earth, humankind, religion); Arabic kabar and selamat along with the Islamic vocabulary; and Javanese the everyday aku (I/me). Even French turns up: kado, a gift, from cadeau. English now feeds the stream hardest — you will hear instalasi and implementasi where pemasangan and pelaksanaan would do. The old line that Indonesian, unlike French, has no watchdog is out of date. It has a national language agency, Badan Bahasa, and since 2025 formal rules (Permendikdasmen No. 2/2025) policing foreign words on signs, business names and trademarks. Enforcement is guidance-first, but it exists, and spelling is standardised under the official Ejaan Bahasa Indonesia. For all that, the language stays descriptive and good-humoured: the sun is matahari, the "eye of the day", and your beloved is your buah hati, the "fruit of the heart".

Pronunciation

To pronounce Indonesian correctly you need to listen to native speakers, but the guide below will get you close. Indonesian matches sound to spelling far more consistently than English does, though a few sounds trip up English speakers.

• Most letters have a single pronunciation, which spares you the English guessing game of when an "a" is long (fall) or short (fat). It is also why Indonesian versions of foreign words look odd at first — "bureau" becomes biro — and then more logical than the original.
• The one letter with two distinct sounds is "e". Usually it is a soft "uh", like the "a" in "sofa". Sometimes it is a sharper "eh", as in besok (tomorrow), merah (red) and restoran. Sometimes it all but vanishes, so selamat sounds like "slamat". Some words use both, such as merdeka ("muhr-DEH-ka").
• The letter "c" is always "ch" as in "check". And "ngg" is a different sound from "ng".
• Stress is light and falls on the last or second-last syllable. In Jakarta it tends to land on the last. When unsure, say the word flat — no emphasis beats the wrong emphasis.
• A "k" at the end of a word is a glottal stop. If that means nothing to you, just drop the final "k". The honorific Pak ("Mister" or "Father") sounds wrong as "pack" or "pock"; it is closer to the puff of air you make blowing a feather off a table.
• A double vowel, as in maaf ("sorry"), takes a slight glottal catch between the vowels — "ma-af", never "maf".
• Some consonants ("b", "p", "t", "d", "v") are softer than in English, so "b" and "d", or "p" and "t", can be hard to tell apart.

The Alphabet

A rough guide to how an English speaker might sound out the Indonesian alphabet:

Spelling on the phone: the Indonesian alphabet, not NATO

When you need to spell a name over the phone, forget the NATO "Alfa, Bravo, Charlie" alphabet. Contrary to what you may read, ordinary Indonesians do not use it — it belongs to pilots, the military, the police and radio operators, not the man in the shop. Indonesians spell with their own set of place names. Ask a driver or a bank clerk to spell something and you will hear "A Ambon, B Bandung", not "Alpha, Bravo". This is the list worth learning:

Numbers and Counting

1 satu · 2 dua · 3 tiga · 4 empat · 5 lima · 6 enam · 7 tujuh · 8 delapan · 9 sembilan · 10 sepuluh

Greetings

Good morning — selamat pagi
Good day (midday) — selamat siang
Good afternoon — selamat sore
Good evening — selamat malam

Politeness

Please — tolong
Thank you — terima kasih
You're welcome — sama-sama
Sorry / excuse me — maaf / permisi

Useful Phrases

Contributor: nicklemeister

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