Bahasa Indonesian

Indonesian
Bahasa Indonesia
Pronunciation	[baˈhasa indoneˈsia]
Native to	Indonesia
Native speakers	43 million (2010 census) L2 speakers: 156 million (2010 census)
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian (MP) Nuclear MP Malayo-Sumbawan Malayic Malayan Malay Malacca ("Riau") Malay Indonesian
Writing system	Latin (Indonesian alphabet) Indonesian Braille
Signed forms	Sistem Isyarat Bahasa Indonesia
Official status
Official language in	Indonesia
Recognised minority language in	East Timor
Regulated by	Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa
Language codes
ISO 639-1	id
ISO 639-2
ISO 639-3
Glottolog	indo1316
Linguasphere	31-MFA-ac
Countries of the world where Indonesian is a majority native language   Countries where Indonesian is a minority language
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia [baˈhasa indoneˈsia]) is the official language of Indonesia. It is a standardized register of Malay, an Austronesian language that has been used as a lingua franca in the multilingual Indonesian archipelago for centuries. Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world. Of its large population, the majority speak Indonesian, making it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.

Most Indonesians, aside from speaking the national language, are fluent in any of more than 700 indigenous local languages; examples include Javanese, Sundanese and Balinese, which are commonly used at home and within the local community. However, most formal education, and nearly all national mass media, governance, administration, judiciary, and other forms of communication, are conducted in Indonesian.

The Indonesian name for the language is Bahasa Indonesia (literally "the language of Indonesia"). This term is also occasionally found in English and other languages.

Indonesian is a standardized register of "Riau Malay", which despite its common name is not the Malay dialect native to Riau, but rather the Classical Malay of the Malaccan royal courts. Originally spoken in Northeast Sumatra, Malay has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for half a millennium. It might be attributed to its ancestor, the Old Malay language (which can be traced back to the 7th century). The Kedukan Bukit Inscription is the oldest surviving specimen of Old Malay, the language used by Srivijayan empire. Since the 7th century, the Old Malay language has been used in Nusantara (Indonesian archipelago), evidenced by Srivijaya inscriptions and by other inscriptions from coastal areas of the archipelago, such as those discovered in Java.