List of Loan Words in Indonesian - Chronology

Chronology

The study on Indonesian etymology and loan words reflected its historical and social context. Examples are the early Sanskrit borrowings probably in the Srivijaya period, the borrowings from Arabic and Persian during the time of the establishment of Islam in particular, and the ones from Dutch during the colonial period. Linguistic history and cultural history are clearly linked.

• Early Hindu and Buddhist influence from India results in many Sanskrit words in Indonesian (and especially adopted through Javanese influence). Indian traders may have contributed words as well, in Tamil and Sanskrit-related languages.
• Indonesian has involved in trade with Chinese since ancient times and also significant of Chinese immigrants began to migrate to Indonesia, as the result some of Chinese language, especially Hokkien dialect being absorbed into Indonesian.
• Muslim influence, which came at first through Arabic and Persian traders, over a number of centuries results in an extensive Arabic influence and also Persian.
• Portuguese contact, trade and colonization in the 16th century was the first contact between Indonesia and European culture, and had an influence that remains today, in spite of the relatively short time period of that influence.
• Dutch colonization and administration, lasting from the 17th century to the 20th, had an extensive impact on the vocabulary. As Dutch-trained linguists determined the rules for the official Indonesian language, Dutch thus had an impact on the structure of the language as well. For example, suffixes such as "-as" (e.g., kwalitas = quality), "-asi" (e.g., administrasi = administration), and "-if" (e.g., fiktif = fictive) were applied with consistency. Some loan words are still use intensively today, although there are genuine Indonesian language.
• Modern Indonesian regularly adapts new words from other languages, particularly English. In contrast to the large number of mechanical terms borrowed from Dutch (e.g., automotive parts), hitech words are typically taken from English (e.g., internet).

But the processes may also be ‘out of period’; for example, Indonesian words are still being concocted from Sanskrit, and the influence of the Dutch language certainly continued after the Dutch themselves left.

Indonesian has also generalized brand names into common (lower-case) nouns as generic name. For example, "sanyo" refers to any electrical well pump, regardless of manufacturer or "odol" as all of toothpastes. This is similar to the type of generalization that occurs in English words like "xerox" or "tampax" or "polaroid".