An introduction corrects some common misconceptions about the language.Indonesian had its origins not as a lingua franca or pidgin, but in theliterary tradition of the Malay courts of Johor-Riau. It is diglossic,with a formal language used in government and education, and taughtto foreigners, existing alongside a varied colloquial Indonesian usedin everyday life — and increasingly as a mother tongue, though for amajority of Indonesians that remains a regional language such as Javanese.And Indonesian is not simple in any fundamental sense, even if its useof Latin script and regular orthography make it relatively approachablefor English-speaking learners.

The Indonesian Language then proceeds chronologically. Malay is amember of the Western Malayo-Polynesian sub-branch of the Austronesianlanguage family (which originated in Taiwan but now stretches fromMadagascar to Easter Island). Its homeland was probably in westernBorneo, from where sea-faring proto-Malay speakers settled in Sumatra.There, subject to Indian influences and well-placed to control the Straitsof Malacca, Srivijaya arose as the leading power in western Indonesia.Only a few inscriptions survive as evidence for the Old Malay of theperiod, but Sneddon presents some examples of vocabulary derived fromSanskrit around then.

For early Classical Malay, dating roughly from the 14th century, wehave inscriptions and letters and literature; as well as describing theearliest of these in detail, Sneddon looks at the influence of Islamand Arabic (and Tamil and Hindi). The power of Malacca and then theRiau-Johor Sultanate contributed to the use of Malay as a broader linguafranca, which in eastern Indonesia "developed into the post-creole formsof Malay spoken today in places like Ambon, Ternate, Manado and Kupang".

Portuguese and creoles derived from it were widely used, leaving a legacyof several hundred words in Malay vocabulary, but it was the Dutchwho became the dominant colonial power in the archipelago, especiallyafter the 1824 treaty with the British which fixed what are now theborders between Malaysia and Indonesia. The Dutch debated the use ofHigh or Low Malay; one key figure was CA van Ophuijsen, who "ensuredthat the Classical Malay tradition became the basis for School Malay,the type of Malay both taught and used as the medium of instruction inthe education system".

From around 1900 the Dutch increasingly encouraged the learning ofDutch, but School Malay continued to dominate the lower civil serviceand education. When Indonesian nationalists came to choose a nationallanguage, there were no real alternatives, Dutch being the language of anarrow elite and Javanese being too localised, but Sneddon describes thekey events: the Second Indonesian Youth Congress, the Sumpah Pemuda or"youth pledge", the role of Alisjahbana and the magazinePujangga Baru,and so forth. In the brief period of Japanese rule during the SecondWorld War, the prohibition of Dutch from public life led to Indonesian'sinstantaneous elevation as a language of government.

Four chapters cover the last half of the 20th century. A history oflanguage planning covers spelling reform, the education system, therole of (regularly renamed) government departments, key thinkers, the"advice industry" and so forth, but Sneddon emphasizes the limitationsof planning, both in limited success with its projects and in failingto engage at all with colloquial Indonesian.

Other influences on the language included Sukarno's personal style,acronyms and abbreviations, Jakartan Malay and informal Indonesian,and Javanese, Dutch, and Sanskrit (the latter still a source of statuswords, often via Old Javanese). A separate chapter covers the influenceof English, which as well as a huge amount of vocabulary, more or lessassimilated, has brought affixes, loan translations, and some grammaticalinnovations.

Unfortunately the most recent figures Sneddon presents in the finalchapter are from the 1990 census, but they show the vast majority of thoseunder fifty at the time "spoke" Indonesian, ranging from 85% of ruralfemales to 99% of urban males. Sneddon also touches on other Indonesianlanguages here, looking at the rise of regional lingua francas such asBanjarese, Manado Malay and Ambon Malay and the way Javanese speakers canswitch to Indonesian to avoid having to decide between familiarngokoor respectfulkrama. The future of Indonesian, he suggests, is tiedup with the future of Indonesia as a unitary state.

The obvious audience ofThe Indonesian Language is students whowant some background on where the language they are learning came fromand how it is used. But all the Indonesian quotations and words aretranslated or glossed and there is an emphasis on vocabulary, with onlyoccasional forays into topics such as-kan suffixation. So the resultis accessible to those with little or even no knowledge of the languageand should appeal to general readers with a broader curiosity aboutIndonesia or linguistics.

April 2013

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