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Glite Dictionary
Bahasa Indonesia

Bahasa Indonesia

4.8
A form of Malay used as Indonesia's official language
  • noun
translation icon : bahasa indonesia
  • The official language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia, which is used in schools and government.

Examples

  • If the English language Wikipedia were translated into the major Southeast Asian languages of Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malay, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese, it would, as one content source, represent more web pages than all the rest of the online content in these languages combined.

    Blog text (30)

  • Instead, it selected Bahasa Indonesia, or Indonesian, formerly called Malay.

    Academic text (1992)

  • Many people in Indonesia are learning Bahasa Indonesia to communicate better with each other.

  • I enjoy reading books written in Bahasa Indonesia because it helps me improve my language skills.

Synonyms

Indonesian
vsBahasa Indonesia
2 2.9

The national language of Indonesia used by most people

is the standard official form of Malay differing only in the formal label

Surface Forms

Bahasa Indonesia singular
Bahasa Indonezha singular

Morphology

Bahasa + Indonesia

The phrase is directly compositional: 'Bahasa' denotes 'language' and 'Indonesia' names the country, so together they mean 'the language of Indonesia'. This country+language naming pattern is cross-linguistically common and therefore immediately predictable to a learner who knows both constituents.

Etymology

Bahasa Indonesia comes from the words Bahasa, which means 'language', and Indonesia. After independence people chose a simple form of Malay to help different groups across the islands speak together, so Bahasa Indonesia became the country's national 'language'.