<story><title>Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180703-why-no-one-speaks-indonesias-language</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>curtis</author><text>The article&amp;#x27;s premise is that it seems like nobody in Indonesia speaks Bahasa Indonesia well, because it&amp;#x27;s always a second language.  I can&amp;#x27;t find a good reference right now, but I think that&amp;#x27;s wrong.  I&amp;#x27;m under the impression that in Jakarta and the surrounding areas (probably tens of millions of people) Bahasa Indonesia really is spoken as a first language.  I think this area has historically been Malay-speaking anyway, and modern Indonesian is very closely related to Malay, so this wouldn&amp;#x27;t be a big stretch.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>perlancar3</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m Indonesian. Lots of people have Bahasa Indonesia as their first language, especially in the cities. Unless you go to the remote areas, you practically won&amp;#x27;t find people who can&amp;#x27;t speak Indonesian.&lt;p&gt;In fact, it&amp;#x27;s the use of regional languages like Sundanese which is diminishing. I could really feel the skill and the vocabulary range of even the native Sundanese are worse than 10-20 years ago. Lots of mixing with Indonesian vocabulary without knowing the Sundanese words.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why standard Indonesian is not spoken throughout Indonesia</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180703-why-no-one-speaks-indonesias-language</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>curtis</author><text>The article&amp;#x27;s premise is that it seems like nobody in Indonesia speaks Bahasa Indonesia well, because it&amp;#x27;s always a second language.  I can&amp;#x27;t find a good reference right now, but I think that&amp;#x27;s wrong.  I&amp;#x27;m under the impression that in Jakarta and the surrounding areas (probably tens of millions of people) Bahasa Indonesia really is spoken as a first language.  I think this area has historically been Malay-speaking anyway, and modern Indonesian is very closely related to Malay, so this wouldn&amp;#x27;t be a big stretch.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zafiro17</author><text>In Jakarta the people speak Bahasa and Javanese equally.  People who have come in from other areas of the country speak their own language plus Bahasa; the Javanese who were born there make Javanese the most common language.&lt;p&gt;Malay and Bahasa are 90% the same language.  Bahasa is considered a traders&amp;#x27; language, much like Swahili - a lingua franca that allowed commerce to happen for centuries.&lt;p&gt;Source: studied bahasa for two years and used to live on Java - amazing, complex place.</text></comment>