Do Indonesians have a native written language? I know right now they write their language with Roman letters, but I'm certain it wasn't always so.

yeah indonesia have javanese word wh9ich look like sanskrit and india word.

Here is a chart that shows the evolution of Writing and Scripts.

That chart isn't that informative and reliable. They forgot to mention Vietnamese Chu Nom under "Chinese pictogram". Not to mention the writing script of Xixia, Jurchen, Khitan, Naxi and Tangut.

Well, kulong (your name sounds familiar...have we met before?)

There are actually many toungues spoken in Indonesia, some do have a script, some dont. For example, Javanese has a script decended from the ancient Brahmic scripts of Northern India, and is remotely related to the Devangari script used to write some Indian languages. This is also used to write other languges such as Balinese.

As for Bahasa Indonesian, B.I. is mostly an artificial toungue, a standardization of the various dialects of Maylay found throughout the area. It is written with the Latin alphabet. Maylay itself may be written in the Arabic script, and I have seen some packaging with it such, but it has largely been superceded by the Roman alphabet.



On an-related note, You are also correct in this, although the Naxi pictograms are somewhat more of a mnemoic device than actual ideograms.

good question i have no idea lol

What do you mean... like a forumlated alphabet that isn't made up of romantic characters? All I know is that my Indonesian friends write in a romatized language.


-Norm

so they write in a roman numeral type way??? lol i don't get it

dtl88,

You seems well versed in Malay/Indonesian. Please solve a mystery for me. I have been told that Vietnamese are full of Malay words. Can you verify this?

Viet Malay

Thang Thanga (ladder)
Bong Bonga (flower)
Dot Dot (to burn)
Ta Eh Ta (I, me)

Um, well. Tangga, i know in bhs Indo means stairs and bunga means flower. Those words seem to have some similarities with the Viet words from your list.

Wow, we indeed have Indonesian/Malay vocabulary in our language.

How about Songa? In Vietnamese, Song means river.

Cadi for child or children? In Northern Vietnam, Cai' +di~ was often used for a young girl.

Oh yeah! sunga in bhs Indo means river...v. similar, hey!! Child in Indonesian is anak. I wonder, however, whether those words in Indo actually came from Vietnam rather than the other way round???

I think the old Malay culture influences everyone in Asia. It's a fact that Malays spread their culture as far East as Hawaii and Easter Island, as far West as South Africa and Madagascar and as far as North as Japan.

Tanga means stupid while bunga means fruit in tagalog

interesting..

indonesian word for "stupid" is bodoh or it can be tolol .... and it can be few other more.... we have many synonim. XD

indonesian word for "fruit" is buah.

buah kesukaan kamu apa ? (it means, " what is your favorite fruit ?)

tolol(indo)=Ulol(tagalog)

so tagalog and indo are really closely related?

Hardly -- I am a part-time linguist.

It is now called Bahasa Indonesia which is the national language spoken in Indonesia.

Most of ancient Indonesian writings originated from India .

Indonesia had about 400 dialects spoken in this vast country.

Yes. There are similarities among Indonesian, Malaysian and Philippine languages.

Some words that are similar between the three languages:
lima- lima -lima -five

anak-anak-anak- child

Similarities between Bahasa Indonesia and Filipino language

kambing- kambing -goat
ulang-ulang-shrimp
more words to follow

I'VE SEEN THIS SCRIPT OF INDONESIA IT IS VERY ELEGANT LOOKING

GO TO THIS SITE ON SCRIPTS ITS VERY INFORMATIVE

HTTP://WWW.OMNIGLOT.COM

beside Javanese Script, as far as i know there are also some other scripts like Buginese/makassarese script, some old script i think was written in ancient javanese script, beside that before indonesian recognise roman script, they also use arab script with some addition to write.

I think anak is also Filipino, as well as payung, gunting, kami, ako/aku.

From Britannica I've also found these similarities:
da'án - jalan - road
lángit - langit - sky
ma-asín - (m)asin - salty
aním - enam - six

and other basic words such as:
eye - mata
stone - batu
rain - hujan
breast/milk - susu
crack open - pecah

should also exist in Filipino, but I can't confirm this.....sorry:)

And another similarity between Viet and Indo is micin (vetsin), although I'm not sure how you would pronounce it or write it in Viet (MSG - Flavor enhancer). I was totally surprised when a Viet friend said this while cooking with her friend.

I'm not too sure about cai'=di~ for the word children, but there is an Indonesian language that has the word ca'di for the word small.

Well before Malay was using arabic alphabets with some additional letters but them after the british came to Malaysia, now they use latin. So, Indonesian is a basically Malay with some different words, but Indonesian was formed after the latin words thing, so basically there is NO native writings for Indonesian. There is for Javanese but for the Indonesian language, no ^^

I don't think Indonesia exist before 1945.

I think the country is a compilation of Ducth East Indies.

Yes it existed before 1945, but in the old times it didn't because there are parts that don't want to become one country. CMIIW

In Polynesian languages, some of the Malay words can be identified:

Polynesian/Malay/English:

Rangi=Langit=Sky
Fatu=Batu=Stone
Fenua=Benua=Continent (but the Polynesian meant fenua as land)
Lima=Lima=Five



Check out this link. A number of languages have their roots from the Malay language.

http://www.answers.com/topic/austronesian-languages

the buguse have their own alphabets and script along with several sub-malay cultures. It's been discussed in the Malaysian thread. I am tool lazy to search for it.