Japanese proved to be impractical, while Dutch was now banned. ‘During this period,’ Nugroho says, ‘Bahasa Indonesia evolved from a little-used language, known only to a small group of leaders in political and literary circles, to become one which was universally used in all fields of life and knowledge . . . it was the Japanese occupation that opened the way for the adoption and general use of the Indonesian language.’36 What the Indonesians did, then, was take another Austronesian language that was just a trade language, and no Indonesian’s mother tongue, and make it into their lingua
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WW2
