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Indonesian linguistic data
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Common questions about Indonesian
What linguistic data does this Indonesian page show?
Word order, tone, gender count, case marking, adposition direction, syllable structure, consonant inventory traits, vowel system, morphological alignment, script, register stratification, speaker count, and geographic area. Each row is one feature with Indonesian's value visible; you can add other languages to read the same feature side by side.
Where do the Indonesian data points come from?
Typological features are merged from URIEL+ (Mortensen et al.) and a curated set authored against descriptive grammars. Speaker counts come from Ethnologue and Glottolog. Geographic area is computed from the Asher 2007 world language atlas. Similarity scores combine genetic distance, typological overlap, and lexical-borrowing data.
Does Indonesian have any verb conjugation?
No tense, person, or number agreement on verbs. Time is signaled lexically (kemarin 'yesterday', sekarang 'now', besok 'tomorrow') or with aspect markers like sudah 'already', sedang 'currently', akan 'will'. The verb root pergi 'go' is the same form for I/you/he/we/they and past/present/future.
What's the relationship between Indonesian and Malay?
Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) and Malaysian (Bahasa Melayu) are standardized varieties of the same Malay language, mutually intelligible but with diverging vocabulary, spelling conventions, and loanword sources (Indonesian leans Dutch and Javanese, Malaysian leans English and Arabic). Both descended from Riau Malay. Brunei Malay is a third standard.
Why is the similarity score between Indonesian and Tagalog moderate rather than high?
Both are Austronesian and share core Malayo-Polynesian vocabulary and reduplication strategies, but they're in different sub-branches (Malayic vs Philippine). Tagalog is also famously voice-/focus-marking-heavy, which Indonesian doesn't replicate. The factor breakdown chip on the row tells you which dimensions contributed most.
Sources for Indonesian
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Sneddon, James Neil; Adelaar, Alexander; Djenar, Dwi Noverini & Ewing, Michael C. (2010). Indonesian: A Comprehensive Grammar, 2nd ed. Routledge. — Standard English-language reference; thorough morphology, syntax, and discourse. [via static/grammar-library/ind/sneddon-2010-indonesian-comprehensive-grammar.pdf]