It's the Lingua Franca of the country. There are many regional languages, dialects. There must be one mother language (school, government) otherwise it would be a mess. It is based on Malay. There are more countries where this is the case, India for example. Several countries in Africa (French) or Arabic (Morocco, Algeria, Tunesia, where most people speak a Berber dialect or the Arabic dialect). On the other hand: Arabic is in fact the Lingua Franca of all "Arabic" countries (Egypt, Iraq, Libanon, Syria, Saoudi Arabia etc.) since all these countires have an local Arabic dialect. Someone from Morocco probably will not understand someone from Egypt if they speak their dialect (other words, consonants that are used different). |