About Indonesian Language
According to Wikipedia.org, Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. It belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian branch while the standard dialect is Malay. When Indonesia became independent they declared Indonesian as their official language in 1945. Indonesian is spoken by 23 million people while it is the second language of 140 million people. As most Indonesians are bilingual they know more than three languages. Besides Indonesia, this language is also spoken in the Netherlands, the Philippines, and Singapore. Several dialects are spoken in various areas. The northern dialect is known as Malay while the southern dialect is most commonly spoken in Indonesia. There are regional dialects that are spoken in both north and south of Indonesia. It consists of six vowels but the sound system is similar to Malay.
About Malay Language
According to Wikipedia.org, Malay is the official language of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. It is also spoken unofficially in many parts of Thailand. You will be surprised to know that the native speakers of this language exceed 290 million. There are around 260 million people in Indonesia alone who speak Malay. Standard Malay has many different names. It is also known as Court Malay. Speakers find it easy to distinguish this language from others. Malay is written in the Latin script but Arabic script is also a huge part of it. However, this Latin script is more common among people of Malaysia and Brunei. Since the 17th century, this language is inspired by Dutch and Britain. Jawi script was also replaced by Rumi script that is now officially used for many purposes. Malay features many non-native consonants that are borrowed from English and Arabic words.
