Bahasa Indonesia is based on the Malay language which has been an intermediary language for trade and elites throughout the Malay Islands for centuries. The history of Bahasa Indonesia began in the colonial period. In the early 17th century, the VOC or the Dutch East Indies company established a trading post in Batavia, the site of Jakarta today, and over the next three centuries it expanded to other regions in Indonesia today. The Dutch East Indies Company made Malay the administrative language of its trading post. In 1799, the Dutch East Indies company went bankrupt and the Dutch government took control of the colony. By the end of the 18th century, the British East Indies Company had also arrived in the islands. And in 1824, the agreement between England and the Netherlands dividing the Malay Islands was England to the north and the Netherlands to the south. In the Dutch colony, promotion of Dutch language and education in the Netherlands began, but only limited, mostly to the elite. Compared to other colonial powers, the Dutch were not really interested in changing the culture of the colony. Their main purpose is to facilitate trade. Therefore, because Malay is an intermediary language that can facilitate trade, and there is no reason for them to introduce it to the Netherlands as an intermediary language. The Netherlands promotes Malay as an educational language, the classical Malay language spoken in Malacca and the Johor Sultanate, as a standard language. The standard form of Malay continued to develop with the abundance of Malay literature in the 19th century. And in the 20th century, Malay linguists published dictionaries and grammars to further standardize and modernize languages. Dutch has never been widely spread in Indonesia. In fact, in 1940, only 2% of Indonesians could speak Dutch. But, even so, the Dutch role massively entered Malay in areas under Dutch control. And this is one of the things that makes the variety of Malay languages in Indonesia different from other languages.

In the early 20th century, a pro-independence movement emerged and people throughout the Dutch colony began to see themselves as Indonesian. The term Indonesia is a new term for the archipelago, which was coined by European ethnologists but adopted by nationalists in the Dutch colony. At a youth conference in 1928, young nationalists declared the Youth Pledge, with three ideals: one homeland, one nation and one language. The language they chose was the variety of Malay languages in Indonesia, which they named "Bahasa Indonesia". When Indonesia declared independence in 1945, Bahasa Indonesia was declared the national language of the Indonesia.

At the time of independence, Bahasa Indonesia was the native language of only 5% of the population, while Javanese was the native language of more than 40% of the population. Bahasa Indonesia, previously known as Malay, has been the language of instruction throughout the Indonesian archipelago for centuries. So people in various regions in Indonesia already know Bahasa Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia is a much simpler language than Javanese and can realistically be learned by millions of people as a second language. Bahasa Indonesia turned out to be the right choice, succeeded in becoming the language of government, education, trade and communication between people in various regions in Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia completely replaced the former Dutch colonial language, Malay as the national language and that was something that was very rare in the Dutch colonial era.

At present, Bahasa Indonesia is still the second language for most Indonesians. But it is becoming increasingly common as a mother tongue, especially in big cities in Indonesia. That's because people from all small cities move to big cities, like Jakarta and Semarang. So, instead of speaking in their native language, they speak Indonesian instead. In addition, some of them married each other and they raised their children to speak Bahasa Indonesia as their mother tongue.


Well, no doubt, one of the things that makes Bahasa Indonesia so successful as a national language so quickly is its simplicity. Bahasa Indonesia has simple phonology and orthography. In general, one letter represents only one sound. Bahasa Indonesia has the simple structure of Basic Sentences Patterned S. P. O. Pel.. There is no problem in changing pronunciation in Bahasa Indonesia. There is also no gender grammar in Bahasa Indonesia. There is no plural in Bahasa Indonesia and the explicit plural is made by reduplication. Reduplication means you repeat the word again. And perhaps, the best of all is the absence of verb conjugations. The legal basis for the use of Bahasa Indonesia in contracts within companies. The Indonesian government issued Law No. 24 of 2009 concerning the Law on National Flags and Languages, National Symbols and National Anthem, where Article 31 stipulates that Bahasa Indonesia must be used in memorandum of understanding or contracts involving state institutions, government agencies of the Republic of Indonesia, Indonesian private companies, or citizens Indonesia itself. 

Article 29 states, (1) Bahasa Indonesia must be used as the language of instruction in national education. (2) The language of instruction referred to in paragraph (1) may use a foreign language for purposes that support the students' foreign language skills. (3) The use of Bahasa Indonesia as referred to in paragraph (1) does not apply to foreign education units or foreign citizen educator units. In the 1945 Constitution article 36 of the 1945 Constitution reads "We are sons and daughters of Indonesia who speak the same Indonesian language." As mentioned in Article 36 of the 1945 Constitution, Indonesian has succeeded in establishing itself as a national language and language of science.