"This book, the first of its kind, is a historical, social, cultural and linguistic study of Indonesian. It traces the origins and pre-colonial development of the language, the emergence of Classical Malay from the fourteenth century, the choice of Malay by the nationalist movement as the national language prior to independence, the planning associated with the adoption and implementation of the language, its borrowings from other language, its use in contemporary Indonesia and its future. The book challenges many assumptions about Indonesian, particularly countering the myth that Indonesian is a simple language."