Indonesian Program at ASU
Welcome to the Indonesian Program at ASU! (Selamat datang!!!)
Indonesian Courses at ASU are available both in-class and online. Hybrid classes (2 hour in-class and 3 hour online classes in a week) will start in Fall 2009. The courses are designed to develop four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing that are integrated in the teaching-learning activities. The language skills taught are useful for a number of academic majors, such as South East Asia, anthropology, and religious studies as Indonesia has a large number of different ethnic groups and the largest Muslim populations in the world.
About the Indonesian Language
Indonesian or Bahasa Indonesia is an official language of Indonesia. For English speakers the language is often called Bahasa. It is spoken by over 200 millions of Indonesian people living in Indonesia and overseas.
Indonesian becomes the official language since its independence in 1945. Since then, most of the formal and private education, all national media (both printed and electronic), and other forms of communication have been conducted in Indonesian. Indonesia consists of five big islands (Java, Sumatera, Sulawesi, Papua, Borneo/Kalimantan) and thousands of small islands, each of which has its own dialect. Indonesian language in daily life is used simultaneously with these local dialects; thus, the development of Indonesian vocabulary is notably colored by these dialects. At the same time, Indonesian language is evolving fast by incorporating the influences of other languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, and English as well as local languages, such as Javanese.
Why Take Indonesian?
Because Indonesian:
- is the national language of the fourth most populous country in the world
- represents a stunning mosaic of island cultures (Java, Bali, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Irian Jaya, and Borneo/Kalimantan)
- has lively, contemporary literary and political cultures
- develops in parallel to Malay, which is the native language of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei
- is easy to learn with its Latin alphabet and simple pronunciation
- is taught in small classes with lots of personal attention