Abstract
Indonesia is a large nation in terms of both geography and population, and a very large number of languages are spoken within its territory. Historically, multilingualism was and is the norm in many parts of the archipelago, and common even in areas where one language dominates. The emergence of a unitary state with a national language after World War II has exerted pressure towards greater uniformity, but the shifts which are taking place are best viewed as changing patterns of multilingualism, rather than as shifts of large populations from one language to another. Such shifts in patterns of language use are occurring throughout the nation, and are resulting in threats to the viability of some languages, especially in the eastern part of the archipelago where there are many languages with small speaker populations. The size of the language groups in the east also has consequences for language maintenance. Although official policy recognizes the right of different language groups to maintain their languages and cultures, resources for such activities are scarce and the large ethnolinguistic communities in the west, where several languages have speaker numbers in the millions, have been more successful in accessing resources and institutional support which assist language maintenance. In contrast, speaker groups in the eastern part of Indonesia have limited access to resources available for language maintenance, although recent funding initiatives by organizations based in Europe have at least assisted in drawing attention to the problems faced in that region.
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Musgrave, S. (2014). Language Shift and Language Maintenance in Indonesia. In: Sercombe, P., Tupas, R. (eds) Language, Education and Nation-building. Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137455536_5
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