Indonesian Language

Most Indonesians speak at least one of the several hundreds of local languages (bahasa daerah) as their first tongue, but the official national language, Indonesian (called Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesian) is universally taught in schools and is spoken by nearly every Indonesian. It is the language of business, politics, national media, education and academia. Yet, in isolated areas even on the major islands it is not uncommon to find villagers who are not familiar with Indonesian. It was originally a lingua franca for most of the region, including present-day Malaysia (and is thus closely related to Malay), accepted by the Dutch as the de facto language for the colony, and declared the official language after independence. Despite Islam being the dominant religion, Arabic is not spoken in Indonesia, except for some religious functions, although even then, Indonesian is mostly used.