How to Learn Indonesian (Bahasa)

Becoming conversationally fluent in Bahasa Indonesia means you will have the opportunity to communicate with over 240 million people in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world, and it is located in an area which is currently flourishing with new business opportunities. This country has shared a long cultural history with Indians, Muslims, and other foreign traders who have occupied their country. Known as “Spice Country”, Indonesia has a successful history of trade. Indonesia and the surrounding areas are a massive pot of untapped human resources which will prove to be vital to the world economy in the near future.

The phrase Bahasa Indonesia literally is translated literally “language of Indonesia.” Although most citizens of Indonesia speak multiple languages, they are all bonded with Bahasa. Regional dialects such as Javanese, Minangkabau, and Sundanese are often spoken at home and amongst the community, while most formal education and national media outlets are conducted in Indonesian. While many of these natives maintain the roots of their regional language, everyone in this massively populated country is united under the Bahasa Indonesia language.

A major attraction of speakers to this unique language is the ease of which it can be learned. Proper Indonesian does not consist of tenses or genders. Indonesian also consists of very simple plurals and easy verb conjugation. Also, only using 26 Latin alphabet characters allows for native English speakers to begin their quest to learn the language already familiar with the characters. Consistent spelling and sentence format that is remarkably similar to English are even more reason to put forth the effort to begin your language learning career with Indonesian.

Bahasa Indonesia is also a language that uses agglutination (the process of including affixes to base words). This means that words in Indonesian are formed by merging other words together. The logical layout of the Indonesian language structure allows for students to thrive in a language which appears to be complicated from the outside looking in.