VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesian language has been spoken by a global populace of at least 300 million, including 30 million non-Indonesians, according to the South Sumatra Language Agency.

"Yes, almost 300 million of the global population, including Indonesia's 270 million population, speaks Indonesian. Bahasa Indonesia clearly has the potential to become an international language at par with English," South Sumatra Language Agency Head Umar Solikhan stated here, Thursday.

The regional agency head noted that by mid-2022, some two million people in the Americas and Europe, 2.4 million in Asia-Pacific and Africa, and 5.2 million people in Southeast Asia, excluding Indonesia, speak Indonesian.

While Indonesian language has been taught at some 428 global institutions in 56 countries, some 142 thousand foreign nationals are studying Indonesian under the agency's Indonesian Language for Foreign Speakers programme, he remarked.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic did not bar the spread and development of the Indonesian language overseas, particularly as Law No. 24 of 2009 mandated efforts to make Indonesian an international language, he noted.

To promote correct and appropriate use of Indonesian language, Solikhan said that his agency grants awards to government and private institutions deemed consistent in maintaining the quality of language used in public spaces and internal documents.

He affirmed that the agency remains committed to providing guidance and is ready to be a partner to develop and promote the right and apt use of Indonesian language.

Earlier, on Wednesday (November 30), in accordance with the national language policy mandating regional language preservation, the South Sumatra Language Agency launched an online Palembang-Indonesian language dictionary.

Apart from facilitating residents keen to learn the Palembang language, the dictionary is also an effort to preserve the local language and protect it from extinction, Solikhan said.

The South Sumatra Language Agency, culturalists, academicians, and Palembang-Malay linguists were involved in creating the digital Palembang-Indonesian dictionary. The team also conducted several tests before the dictionary’s launch. (Antaranews)