The Making of the National Language
The Making of the National Language Indonesia, where the Spices islands are located, used to be known as the Dutch East Indies. It was colonized for almost 350 years. The Malay language was already popular all over the archipelago, even before the Europeans came into the region. Malay was the lingua franca among the traders (Sneddon, 2003). The Malay peninsula, the Malacca strait and Malacca were the famous areas where there were a lot of trading posts and the popular route for traveling to Asia from Europe and vice versa. This is why there were many people learned Malay language and the reason it was understood in many parts of Indonesia. Moreover, the Malay was also used in the spread of modern religions such as Christianity and Islam. These two religions were introduced and spread throughout the region, mostly in Malay (Kaplan & Baldauf Jr., 2003). The Dutch learned very quickly the significance of Malay language when they first arrived in the region in the late 16th century and