Austronesian · ISO 639-3 jav · jv
Javanese Language Basa Jawa
Javanese is an Austronesian language spoken by about 91 million people in 3 countries. It is written in the Latin and Javanese scripts.
Where Javanese is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Language family
- Austronesian
- Malayo-Polynesian
- Javanesic
- Modern Javanese
- Global Javanese
- Javanese
Writing system
Latin and Javanese scripts
Related languages
About the Javanese language
Javanese (Basa Jawa) is spoken by about 91 million people, which makes it the 18th most spoken language in the world — just behind German (92 million) and ahead of Vietnamese (85 million). It belongs to the Austronesian language family and, more precisely, to the Global Javanese group within the Javanesic branch.
Where is Javanese spoken?
Javanese is used in 3 countries. The largest communities live in Indonesia (96 million), Malaysia (414,777) and Singapore (90,426).
Share of the population that speaks Javanese: Indonesia 34% (96 million), Malaysia 1.2% (414,777) and Singapore 1.5% (90,426).
Javanese is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Javanese is written in the Latin and Javanese scripts. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Caribbean Javanese.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 jv, ISO 639-3 jav.
Frequently asked questions about Javanese
How many people speak Javanese?
Where is Javanese spoken?
What language family does Javanese belong to?
What is Javanese called in Javanese?
Is Javanese an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.