Indonesian bloggers who use English in their blog comprise only 0.01% of the Indonesian population
Statistically, there are 100,000 bloggers who currently reside in
In comparison to the total population of around 245,000,000 in
For truncation’s sake, let’s just round it down to 0.04%.
Being one among that 0.04% inside this 4th most populous country in the world somehow makes me feel highly privileged. I emphasise the word “privileged” here, not “conceited”, hehe… Of course, the “privileged status” can’t apply to South Korean or American or Briton bloggers, where the internet penetration is a hell lot higher and thus resulting in the higher ratio of the Blogger/Total Population. But in the case of
Of that 0.04%, I would guess that at most, there are only 25% of them who uses totally native-like proficiency of English inside their blog. I know this is actually a large marginal erroneous estimate, as I know the actual statistics should be much less than 25%.
Thus, the bloggers can be divided as such (assuming that anyone in the world has access to the internet):
0.01% whose blogs are understood by anybody (6.5 billion ppl)
0.03% whose blogs can only be understood by the Indonesian speaking and Malay-speaking ppl in
Of course, those who mix Indonesian and English in their blog don’t really deserve to be called English-speaking bloggers, esp. if their English are very much incongruent. I’ve seen numerous Indonesians who attempt their mediocre English in their blog which, I must say, is a poor effort (sorry if this offends anyone). Their slangs are copied from
Really, if they can’t be fluent in English, seharusnya memakai bahasa Indonesia sesuai dengan EYD saja. Ato pake bahasa gaulnya Indo aja knapa… Kayak bahasa sms gw ini loh… Gak perlu gaya-gayaan pake bahasa Inggris di blog kalo emang nggak bisa bedain antara “is” dan “was”, ato “has been” dan “have been”. Sebagai warga Indonesia, kalian seharusnya bangga dengan Bahasa Indonesia yang sudah dicanangkan oleh para pencetus Sumpah Pemuda sebagai bahasa pemersatu Indonesia!!!
Not that I’m contradicting my own italicised comments above, but as aforementioned, the reasons that I use English as the sole tongue in my blog are:
- I’m not of pure Indonesian ancestry
- I wasn’t born in
- I know very well that I speak good (if not native-like) English
- I know I’m not gonna reside in
- I want my blog to be understood by anyone, from
There are only 0.01% of Indonesians whose blogs are in English, and I’m glad to be included in that small percentage.
Toshi, thanks for stopping by at my blog. I am very impressed with this posting. You did a lot of work in writing it. I don't know which one is better, an Indonesian writing in hard-to-understand English or an Indonesian writing with a deteriorating Bahasa. Ha ha.
Tosh.
If, as I suspect, you're using the Blog-Indonesia stats, then they have 'only' c. 5,000 blogs listed and they're those who've bothered to register.
Check out Technorati and/or other aggregators and you'll find loads more Indonesian blogs but, you're right, not many 'foreign resident' bloggers.
Another small stat is that half of the population don't have access to a phone, let alone the internet.