🇮🇩 Indonesian #10 Most Spoken Language (252M speakers)

Indonesian is a clear, flexible lingua franca built on Malay. Tense is not conjugated; instead you use aspect and time words: sudah “already,” belum “not yet,” akan “will,” sedang “currently.” Word-building leans on neat prefixes/suffixes and satisfying reduplication.

• Phonemic spelling: what you see is (mostly) what you say. c = ch, j = j in “jam.”
• ny / ng: ny = Spanish ñ; ng = final sound of “sing.”
• e has two faces: schwa /ə/ (most common) vs. closed /e/; context and loanwords decide.
• Loan clusters: Arabic sy ~ sh (e.g., syarat “condition”); Dutch/English clusters appear in modern terms.

• Affixes: meN- (active), di- (passive), ber- (intransitive), ter- (stative/accidental), peN- (agent/instrument), ke- -an (abstract/state).
• Reduplication: plural/variety/emphasis: buku-buku “books,” pelan-pelan “slowly.”
• Pronouns: formal/informal layers (saya / aku); clitics -ku, -mu, -nya.
• Particles: -kah (questions, formal), -lah (focus), pun (even/also).

Standard Indonesian rules schools and media; casual “Jakarta Indonesian” influences everyday speech (loan particles like dong, deh). Malay in Malaysia is mutually intelligible with predictable differences.

• Classical Malay → modern Indonesian (20th c. nation-building) → 1972 spelling reform (EYD) and continuing modernization.

Besok saya akan membeli kopi.
besok saya akan meN-beli kopi
tomorrow I FUT buy coffee (active with meN-)

Root play (ajar “teach/learn” family): belajar “to study,” mengajar “to teach,” pengajar “teacher,” pelajaran “lesson,” ajaran “teaching, doctrine.”

Selamat datang! Friendly, neutral, and widely understood across the archipelago.

• No tense endings: aspect/time words carry the timeline.
• Measure words exist but are chill: sebuah (inanimate), seorang (people) — often omitted in casual speech.
• -nya is a Swiss-army clitic: “his/her/its,” “the,” or topicalizer depending on context.