Vocabulary

A modern dialect of Malay, Indonesian has also borrowed from other languages, including Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese and Austronesian languages. It is estimated that there are some 750 Sanskrit loanwords in modern Indonesian, 1,000 Arabic loans, some of Persian and Hebrew origin, some 125 words of Portuguese (also Spanish and Italian) origin and 10,000 loanwords from Dutch^[19] The vast majority of Indonesian words, however, come from the root lexical stock of its Austronesian (incl. Old Malay) heritage.^{[citation needed]} There are also words derived from Javanese, e.g. aku (meaning I/ me (informal) and its derivative form, mengaku (to admit or confess).