Indonesian

How to spell indonesian

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce indonesian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does indonesian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Indonesia, its people, culture, or language.
2. nounA person from Indonesia, or the national language of Indonesia.

Indonesian in a sentence

• adjective

  The restaurant serves an indonesian rice dish with peanut sauce.

• noun

  The tour guide was an indonesian who spoke four languages.

• adjective

  She studied indonesian trade policy for her dissertation.

• noun

  He is learning indonesian before his posting to Jakarta.

Where does indonesian come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word descends from the place name Indonesia, which was deliberately coined in the nineteenth century from two Greek elements: Indos, meaning 'India' or 'the Indus region', and nesos, meaning 'island'. The literal sense was therefore 'the Indian islands', a tidy label for the vast archipelago lying east of the Indian subcontinent. The English ethnographer George Windsor Earl proposed a similar term in 1850, and his colleague James Richardson Logan settled on 'Indonesia' in the same year as a convenient geographical name. The demonym 'indonesian' was then formed in English by adding the familiar suffix -ian, which marks belonging or origin, much as in 'Canadian' or 'Italian'. The spelling trap sits in the quiet middle: the unstressed '-do-ne-' sequence is easy to garble, and the single 's' is often the moment writers hesitate, since the ending sounds like a soft 'zh' rather than a clear 's'.

How the word is built

• Indo- (from Greek Indos: India)
• -nes- (from Greek nesos: island)
• -ian (adjective/noun suffix: belonging to)