Wellbeing & Culture

Indonesian News

🇮🇩 The Indonesian Language is becoming the tenth official language of the General Assembly UNESCO. It's incredible to see the Indonesian language getting such important recognition at an international level - a proud moment for 🇮🇩 speakers worldwide 🌏.

This is a source of pride and satisfaction for all the people of Indonesia.  Following the president’s announcement, many Indonesians took to social media posting messages full of pride and patriotism over the shared Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia).

President Joko Widodo stressed that “Bahasa Indonesia has played its strategic influential and powerful role to unite us as a pluralistic nation.”

Historically, the language was one of the most important factors for unification, starting with the birth of the modern Republic on 17 August 1945, when the founding fathers Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta declared independence.

Indonesia is a highly diverse country with hundreds of ethnic groups, each with its own mother tongue.  In some remote areas of Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Moluccas, North Sumatra, and Papua, each village has its own language.

How can a multi-ethnic society be "united"?  The problem has been overcome by finding a shared basis in the Indonesian language, the national language.

This was the work of dozens of young people – from different ethnic backgrounds but all nationalists – who, on 28 October 1928, unanimously took the ‘Youth Pledge’ (Sumpah Pemuda), a declaration meant to define their identity at the Second Youth Congress.

The pledge was centred on three ideas: one motherland, one nation, and a unifying language.

That is why today, almost a century later, Indonesians have enthusiastically embraced UNESCO's announcement, which makes Indonesian the tenth official language of the UN agency along with English, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Italian and Portuguese.

https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Indonesian-becomes-the-tenth-official-language-of-UNESCO-59610.html 

Bu Webster