Indonesian

Picture: Mount Agung, Bali
source: webshots

Indonesian, or more precisely, Bahasa Indonesian, is the national language of the Republic of Indonesia. and serves to unite the 200,000,000 citizens of Indonesia, whose first language might be one of the over 300 distinct languages spoken in the Indonesian Archipelago. The South Pacific Islands are home to one of the most diverse inventories of languages on earth, most belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian family of languages. Because Malayo-Polynesian speakers spread out over thousands of islands that were often widely separated, many dialects and, in time, languages evolved from the ancestor language, Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Later, as the South Pacific islands became popular stop off points along the major trade routes between China, India and Arabia, the need for a common trade language arose, and Malay (the official language of Malaysia) became established as a lingua franca. Bahasa Indonesian is one variant of this trade language, probably based on the Riau dialect of Malay spoken in northwestern Sumatra, and was in use in Indonesia by the 16th century. Like most Malayo-Polynesian languages, Bahasa Indonesian is morphologically simple, with no conjugations, tense markings or declensions. It is written using the Roman alphabet.

Sources:

Expat Website Association
University of Auckland
Encyclopedia.com
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