Speakers and Geographic Distribution
Indonesian has 23 million native speakers. Around 140,000,000 speakers use it as a second language alongside their local mother tongue. It is used extensively as a first language by Indonesians in urban areas, and as a second language by those residing in more rural parts of Indonesia.
The VOA and BBC use Indonesian as their standard for broadcasting in Malay. Indonesian is 80% cognate with Malaysian. In Australia, Indonesian is one of three Asian target languages, together with Japanese and Mandarin, taught in some of schools as part of the Languages Other Than English programme.
Read more about this topic: Indonesian Language
Famous quotes containing the words speakers and/or distribution:
“All the great speakers were bad speakers at first. Stumping it through England for seven years made Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it through New England for twice seven trained Wendell Phillips.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)