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are there for all the languages in the region. The next question is whether the languages
are related in any way, in particular whether they can be grouped into language families,
and what the origins of these families were. The next question is on what the status of all
of these languages are, whether they are used widely in society or not, and whether the
number of speakers is dwindling, giving cause for concern about their future sustainability.
Throughout, it should be possible to see whether languages are related or not to others in
different countries and what kinds of dynamics exist when different languages come into
contact with each other.

The language picture in Indonesia
With so many languages in Indonesia, the situation is complicated and we need a broad
perspective to get an overview of some of its features. The way to do this is to define some
broad language types with regard to their identity or function in society, and get an idea
of the demographic distributions. All the languages in Indonesia can be categorized from
a policy perspective into three main categories: (1) the Indonesian language, (2) regional,
indigenous languages, and (3) foreign languages (Alwi and Sugono, 2000, Renandya,
2000: 115). These language categories have different functions in society. A national
language like Indonesian is the national language, the language of unity, and the language
of education, business, media and politics. Regional languages’ function is as markers of
identity and culture. The foreign languages’ function is to provide access to knowledge
for development. A linguistically diverse nation needs a national language as a unifying
force and for economic efficiency. Indonesian is a language that has been developed for
this purpose. It was based on bazaar Malay, one of the regional languages, and has been
developing since independence.
Because of the regional languages, bilingualism and multilingualism is the norm.
Indonesia is a country where many regional languages are in contact with each other. The
development of Indonesian is closely linked to what happens with the regional languages.
Census data tells us that Indonesian is not yet spoken by all Indonesian citizens. About
140 million Indonesians or around 55.51% of the population still speak one of the regional
languages and have Indonesian as a second language. However, over the last three
decades, and supported by government policy, a significant sized community of people

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