Bahasa Indonesia compared to Bahasa Melayu

One thing that many people may notice in Indonesia compared to Malaysia is the different yet very similar language.  Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu share many similarities with one another and even share many words. However both languages have varying differences when it comes to pronunciation of words or vocabulary. 

I myself was educated in Brunei where we were taught standard Bahasa Melayu( we did however have our own dialect), and I remember hearing Bahasa Indonesia for the first time and thinking of how strange it sounded.  While I can understand the basics and converse with most Indonesians, there are certain words or expressions that are simply incomprehensible to me. To make matters more complicated, many of my Indonesian friends speak slang or their own dialect( there are many in Indonesia!).  While some of these differences are minor, there are some which couldn't be further apart in terms of meaning! For example, let us take the word 'budak'.  In Malay the word budak simply means ' child', however in Indonesian the word 'budak' means slave!  I am sure there are some hilarious ( or unfortunate) instances where misunderstandings have occurred! 

After recently having returned from Indonesia, I reflected how fascinating the Indonesian language truly is. This also made me realize that like the language, Indonesia and Malaysia share many similarities culturally, but each have certain unique qualities which make them distinct from one another. 

Naif