top of page

Malay-Indonesian

Malay-Indonesian

Summary

Malay-Indonesian is natively spoken by about 53 million people, primarily in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and Singapore. It is integral to Malay cultural identity, known for its diverse traditions, such as batik art, traditional dance forms like the joget, and Islamic literature. Written in the Latin alphabet, Malay-Indonesian grammar features a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order and a relatively simple system of verb conjugations, making it accessible for language learners.

Stats

  • Language Family: Austronesian

  • Writing System: Latin

  • Writing System Type: Alphabet

  • Writing Direction: L to R

  • Tones / Pitch Accent: N

  • Morphology: Agglutinative

  • Cases: 0

  • Grammatical Gender / Noun Class: 0

  • Number of Verb Tenses: 4

  • Word Order: SVO

  • Number of Vowels (Monophthongs): 6

  • Number of Consonants: 18

Areas Where Spoken

  • Brunei (official) (84.5%) (379 k)

  • Christmas Island (Australia) (18.4%) (300)

  • Cocos (Keeling) Islands (Australia) (61.2%) (400)

  • Indonesia (official) (12.1%) (33.3 mil)

  • Malaysia (official) (58.4%) (19.8 mil)

  • Singapore (official) (11.9%) (671 k)

Resources

bottom of page