National and Official Language: The Long Journey of Indonesian Language

Muhammad Ridwan

Abstract


Indonesia is a big country with more than 18,000 islands. It has at least 726 regional languages, making it the World’s second most diverse, after Papua New Guinea. To choose one national and official language is a big problem for Indonesia because of the diversity of the regional languages. Given the diversity of cultures and vernaculars of our country, it was difficult to find what Indonesians had in common. That common identity would eventually be found by developing standardizing language to unify the islands.  This paper will discuss the process of selecting Malay language became Indonesia’s national and official language. This is very important because national and official language will show the unity of a nation, especially during the colonization.

Keywords


national language, official language, Malay language

Full Text:

PDF

References


Cooper, R.L. 1989. Language Planning and Social Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ewards, John. 2009. Language and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Holmes, Janet. 2001. Learning About language: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. England: Edinburgh Gate.

Holmes, J. 2001. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. England: Pearson Education.

Jones. M.C. and Singh. I. 2005. Exploring language Change. London and New York: Routledge.

Montgomery, M. 1996. An Introduction to Language and Society: 2nd Edition, London: Routledge.

Morris, Charles. 1946. Signs, Language and Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Rampton, Ben. 2004. Linguistic Ethnography: A Discussion Paper. Retrieved on 07 July 2010 from www.ling-ethnog.Org.uk.

Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. NewYork: Harcourt Brace.

Schiffman, H.F. 1996. Linguistic Culture and Language Policy. New York and London: Routledge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning. Accessed on March 4, 2014.

http://www.marketingtranslationblog.com/2009/05/07/how-to-maintain-your-language-skills-part-two/comment-page-1/. Accessed on March 5, 2014.

http://en.wikipedia.org. Indonesian Language. Accessed on May 20113

http: //balai bahasa bandung.web.id/bdg. Sekilas Tentang Sejarah Bahasa Indonesia. Accessed on May 2013

http: //ibahasa.blogspot.com. Sejarah Bahasa Indonesia. Accessed on May 2013.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.33258/birci.v1i2.14

Article Metrics

Abstract view : 2097 times
PDF - 6401 times

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.