Geographic distribution

This is a map of where Indonesian is predominantly spoken. Dark green represents where Indonesian is spoken as a major language. Light green represents where it is a minority language.

The language is spoken throughout Indonesia (and East Timor), although it is used most extensively as a first language in urban areas and usually as a second or third language in more rural parts of Indonesia. It is also spoken by an additional 1.5+ million people worldwide, particularly in the Netherlands, Suriname, East Timor, the Philippines, Australia, Saudi Arabia, New Caledonia, and the United States.^[1]

[edit]Writing system

Indonesian is written with the Latin alphabet. Consonants are represented in a way similar to Italian, although ‹c› is always /tʃ/ (like English ‹ch›), ‹g› is always /ɡ/ ("hard") and ‹j› represents /dʒ/ as it does in English. In addition, ‹ny› represents the palatal nasal /ɲ/, ‹ng› is used for thevelar nasal /ŋ/ (which can occur word-initially), ‹sy› for /ʃ/ (English ‹sh›) and ‹kh› for the voiceless velar fricative /x/. Both /e/ and /ə/ are represented with ‹e›.

It is important to note the spelling changes in the language that have occurred since Indonesian independence. The changes include:

The first of these changes (‹oe› to ‹u›) occurred around the time of independence in 1947; all of the others were a part of the Perfected Spelling System, an officially-mandated spelling reform in 1972. Some of the old spellings (which were derived from Dutch orthography) do survive in proper names; for example, the name of a former president of the Indonesia is still sometimes written Soeharto, and the central Java city of Yogyakarta is sometimes written Jogjakarta.

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