In Reply to: What I want to know... posted by draughtsman on Saturday, 21. February 2015 at 12:55 Bali Time:
Is the national language and is taught in schools and used in all media.
Apart from this national language each region of Indonesia has their own language(s) some of which are very similar to Bahasa Indonesia.
The local dialects are used with familiies and within friends however publicly, Bahasa Indonesia is used.
For example, in Central Java and East Java, Javanese is spoken, West Java, Sundanese. In west Kalimantan Bahasa Melayu is spoken and in Sumatra many other languages are spoken however everyone is taught Bahasa Indonesia at school so everyone uses it.
The only Indonesians that don't speak it would be the very young, the non educated, orang bisu or the elderly however many of the elderly can speak Dutch!
If you feel like you want to learn more of the local Balinese language go ahead but it gets complicated as the language is spoken differently depending on ones social level.
To complicate things further Bahasa Indonesia has many slang words, idioms and is spoken in different accents however I feel it is a fairly easy language to learn.
Good luck with it.