Javanese language facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Javanese
Basa Jawa
Basa (language) written in the Javanese script
Native to	Java (Indonesia)
Ethnicity	Javanese (Mataram, Osing, Tenggerese, Boyanese, Samin, Cirebonese, Banyumasan, Javanese Surinamese, etc)
Native speakers	94 million  (2013)
Language family	Default Javanese
Dialects	Javanese dialects
Writing system	Latin script Javanese script Pegon alphabet
Dark green: areas where Javanese is the majority language. Light green: where it is a minority language.
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Javanese is a language spoken by the Javanese people. They live mostly in the central and eastern parts of Java, an island in Indonesia. You can also find Javanese speakers along the northern coast of western Java. Over 98 million people speak Javanese as their first language. This means it's the native language for more than 42% of all people in Indonesia!

Javanese belongs to a group of languages called Austronesian languages. These languages are spoken across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. However, Javanese is quite unique and doesn't have many very close relatives. Its closest language cousins are Sundanese, Madurese, and Balinese. Most Javanese speakers also know Indonesian. Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. People use it for school, business, and talking with Indonesians who don't speak Javanese.

You can also find Javanese speakers in other countries. Some live in Malaysia, especially in the states of Selangor and Johor. There are also Javanese speakers in Singapore. In Suriname, a country in South America, some people whose families came from Java speak a special version of Javanese. It's a creole language, which means it's a mix of Javanese and other languages.

Where Javanese is Spoken

This old text shows Madurese written using the Javanese script.

Javanese is mainly spoken in the Yogyakarta area, and in Central and East Java provinces. It is also spoken on the north coast of West Java. Many Javanese people live in other parts of Indonesia too. This happened because of a government program in the late 1900s. This program encouraged people to move to less crowded areas. So, you can find Javanese speakers in provinces like Lampung, Jambi, and North Sumatra.

In Suriname, a special form of Javanese is spoken. It's used by the descendants of people who moved there long ago. They were brought by the Dutch to work on plantations in the 1800s. Javanese was also used for writing important texts in places like Madura, Bali, Lombok, and the Sunda region of West Java. It was even the language used in the royal court of Palembang, in South Sumatra, until the late 1700s.

How Javanese is Written

Javanese can be written using three different writing systems. These are the Latin script, the Javanese script, and the Arabic script. Today, the Latin script is used most often for writing Javanese. However, the traditional Javanese script is still very important. It is taught in schools from elementary to high school in Yogyakarta, Central Java, and East Java.

Javanese is one of the largest languages in the world by the number of people who speak it as their native language. It is also the biggest language that doesn't have official status in any country. About 100 million people speak or understand Javanese. A large part of Indonesia's population, about 45%, are of Javanese background. All seven Indonesian presidents since 1945 have been of Javanese descent. This means Javanese has had a big impact on how Indonesian, the national language, has grown.

Javanese Dialects

Modern Javanese has three main types, or dialects. These are Central Javanese, Eastern Javanese, and Western Javanese. These dialects form a "dialect chain" across the island of Java. This chain stretches from northern Banten in the far west to Banyuwangi Regency in the eastern part of the island. People who speak different Javanese dialects can usually understand each other quite well.

Images for kids

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  A Javanese noble lady (left) would address her servant with one vocabulary, and be answered with another. (Studio portrait of painter Raden Saleh's wife and a servant, colonial Batavia, 1860–1872.)

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  Susuhunan Pakubuwono X of Surakarta. Surakarta has been a center of Javanese culture, and its dialect is regarded as the most "refined".

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  A modern bilingual text in Portuguese and Javanese in Yogyakarta.

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  Distribution map of languages spoken in Java, Madura, and Bali.

See also

In Spanish: Idioma javanés para niños