Even if you speak fluent Bahasa Indonesia, it’s likely that you will learn something new from this fascinating video from the Langfocus channel. Hosted by linguist Paul Jorgensen, Langfocus’ videos offer entertaining insights into different languages, their histories and the ways they are used in everyday life. His latest video, on Bahasa Indonesia, addresses some really interesting topics such as the historical reasons it was chosen as the national language when Indonesia became independent and why is it that there are so many more people who speak Bahasa Indonesia as a second language then as a first language.
Paul also addresses the differences between formal Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Gaul (the more informal colloquial Indonesian commonly used in everyday speech), a topic that will certainly be of interest to Indonesian language learners. But the video includes all sorts of tidbits that might surprise native speakers, such as the fact that the Bahasa Gaul pronoun for you, “lu”, is actually a loanword from Chinese used in Betawi.
Since Bahasa Indonesia is heavily based on the Malay language, those of you who want to learn more about Indonesian’s linguistic origins should check his video on Bahasa Melayu.
(H/T to redditor Sanzo84 on r/Indonesia for the great find!)
