User:Swarabakti/Lampung script

More than 700 living languages are spoken in Indonesia. These figures indicate that Indonesia has about 10% of the world’s languages, establishing its reputation as the second most linguistically nation in the world after Papua New Guinea. Most languages belong to the Austronesian language family, while there are over 270 Papuan languages spoken in eastern Indonesia.

The official language is Indonesian (locally known as bahasa Indonesia), a standardised form of Malay, which serves as the lingua franca of the archipelago. The vocabulary of Indonesian borrows heavily from regional languages of Indonesia, such as Javanese, Sundanese and Minangkabau, as well as from Dutch, Sanskrit, Arabic and more recently English. The Indonesian language is primarily used in commerce, administration, education and the media, and thus nearly every Indonesian speaks the language to varying degrees of proficiency. Most Indonesians speak other languages, such as Javanese, as their first language. This makes plurilingualism a norm in Indonesia.

Indonesia recognizes only a single national language, and indigenous languages are recognized at the regional level, although policies vary from one region to another. Javanese is the most widely spoken language without official status, thus the Javanese are the largest ethnic group, constituting 40.2% of the population, and are politically dominant. They are predominantly located in the central to eastern parts of Java and also sizable numbers in most provinces. The Sundanese, Malay, Batak, Madurese, Minangkabau and Buginese are the next largest groups in the country. A sense of Indonesian nationhood exists alongside strong regional identities.

Languages in Indonesia are classified into nine categories: national language, locally used indigenous languages, regional lingua francas, foreign and additional languages, heritage languages, languages in the religious domain, English as a lingua franca and sign languages. Of these, Javanese is the most widely spoken. In addition to Javanese, there are hundreds other indigenous languages. Most of them are locally used indigenous languages , a category of languages referring to those spoken at the local, regional level, spoken by a small number of people, ranging from a few to a few thousands of people. These include small languages such as Benggoi, Mombum and Towei. Other languages are spoken at the regional level to connect various ethnicities. For this reason, these languages are known as regional lingua francas (RLFs). Zein identifies that there are 43 RLFs, categorized into two types: Malayic RLFs and Non-Malayic RLFs. The former refers to a group of regional lingua francas that are associated with the Malay isolect because they are indigenised varieties of Malay or Indonesian. These include such languages as Ambon Malay, Banjar Malay and Papuan Malay. The latter refers to regional lingua francas that are not associated with Malay or Indonesian, including Biak, Iban and Onin.

As early as the seventh century AD, the natives of the archipelago began an intense period of trades with those coming from China, India and other countries. This was followed by a long period of colonization by the Dutch and Japan colonials. The outcome of these processes has been the development of a group of heritage languages spoken by Arab, Chinese, Eurasian and Indian descendants, among others. Chinese linguistic varieties such as Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin are the most common heritage languages. A small number of heritage language speakers speak Arabic and Tamil.

Other languages such as Arabic, German, French, Japanese, Mandarin and Korean are non-native to Indonesia. These languages are included in the educational curriculum and may be categorized as either foreign or additional languages, depending on the instrumental function of the languages, length and types of exposure, as well as the wide-ranging motivations of the speakers or learners who use and or learn them.

English has traditionally been categorized as the first foreign language in Indonesia. However, increasing exposure to the language, the decreasing influence of native-speaker norms in the country and the prevalent use of the language as a lingua franca in the broader context such as ASEAN means that the categorization has been put into question. Scholars such as Lowenberg argue that English is best seen as an additional language. Meanwhile, Zein argues that English in Indonesia is best categorized as a lingua franca, an argument parallel with Kirkpatrick’s contention on the use of English as a lingua franca in the broader ASEAN context.