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How Often Do Indonesians Speak Indonesian? How Often Do They Speak Their Local Language?

As we all know, there are many languages spoken in Indonesia, despite of having the national language, Indonesian language. There are hundreds of local language in Indonesia.

This local languages are already spoken by local people since long time ago. Even several elderly people can only speak local language. You might be curious about how often Indonesians speak Indonesian and how often they speak the local language. Here, we will try to explain the answer to you.

Indonesian language is the national language of Indonesia. Ideally, all of Indonesian people should be able to speak in Indonesian properly. However, due to various local language spoken in Indonesia, not all of Indonesian people able to speak Indonesian properly.

Usually, this related to the location and education level of the people. People with higher education usually able to speak in Indonesian more properly. Also, people live in the city or near the city understand Indonesian more that people live in rural areas.

Read more about Indonesian local language:

However, not all of people in rural area not able to speak in Indonesia. Sometimes they understand several words in Indonesia. However, because of people in their area usually speak local languages more, they not used to hear people speak Indonesian.

They will understand Indonesian more slowly. Also, people live in rural area that often go to the urban area are exposed more to Indonesian. While people that spend all of their lives in rural area don’t have many chances to speak and converse in Indonesian properly.

Age is also an important factor in this topic. Usually, older people (people with age more than sixty or people born before the independence of Indonesia) in rural area cannot speak in Indonesian properly. They used to speak in their own local language.

In large cities or cities closer to Jakarta, people speak less local language. They speak using Indonesian language in their daily lives. However, they usually speak using informal language more than using formal language. The formal language usually only used when talking in formal situation such as at class, meeting, and so on.

Read more about Indonesian language:

People near Jakarta or Bandung are also use Indonesian language mixed with the local language. For example, people in Jakarta use “gue” and “elo” that come from Betawi language.

While people in Bandung use more Sundanese language mixed with Indonesian language. For example, the usage of words such as “urang”, “maneh”, “teuing”, “geulis”, “kasep”, and others.

Not all of young people live near Jakarta or Bandung don’t understand the local language. They just use more Indonesian because of people in Jakarta and Bandung came from all over Indonesia. Not all of them understand Sundanese and Betawi language. As a result, they usually speak using Indonesian language more in the daily conversation. The native people usually still can understand the local language even though they speak using Indonesian more.

However, people live near other cities such as Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Semarang, cities in Sumatera, cities in Kalimantan, cities in Sulawesi and Papua speak more local language than using Indonesian language. They still understand and use Indonesian in formal occasion. However, for daily conversation, they use the local language more.

That’s all about the answer for question “how often do Indonesians speak Indonesian and how often do they speak their local language”. Thank you for reading. I hope the information will be helpful for you.

Categories: Linguistics