Fewer Australians are learning Indonesian, and Indonesia could do far more to fix that

(Wikimedia Commons/Mia Salim), CC BY

For more than two decades, linguists and researchers have observed a decline in Australians’ interest in learning the Indonesian language (bahasa Indonesia).

A 2010 report from a team of Australian applied linguists shows that since 2001, the number of students taking Indonesian language lessons in Australian schools had decreased by at least 10,000 per year.