>>25655251It is foreigners who use the incomplete term bahasa when referring to Indonesian language.
Normal regular Indonesians would always use the term Bahasa Indonesia or BI or Bhs Ind, as we learn about them in elementary school.
Indonesians who grew overseas may use this term, emulating their fellow locals. My Singaporean and Australian friends who are Indonesian-descent often use this term bahasa as well, especially when they don't speak the language very well.
Personally, I don't like this phenomenon. It is good having foreigners at least try to speak our language. But this is like my parents liberally substituting the term pasta with spaghetti. This creates confussion when penne, rigatoni, bucatini, fettucine, liguine, tagliatelle, fusilli, every pasta is simply called “spaghetti”. Or simply calling it pasta without specifics.
“Which pasta are you going the sauce with?”
“I am going to serve it with pasta!”
It doesn't logically answer the question.
Because “bahasa” may refer to Malay term for “language”, but for people who may catch the term, there is Bahasa Melayu, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Jawa, Bahasa Batak, Bahasa Padang, Bahasa Sunda, Bahasa Bugis, Bahasa Dayak, Bahasa Manado, Bahasa Bali, Bahasa Maluku, Bahasa Asmat, Bahasa Dhani, Bahasa Amungme, Bahasa Kamoro, you know, Indonesia is diverse. In addition to that, there is also term like Bahasa Inggris, which means English, or Bahasa Bengali or Bengali.
