Javanese is the language of the Javanese people from the central and eastern parts of the island of Java, in Indonesia. There are also pockets of Javanese speakers in the northern coast of western Java. It is the native language of more than 98 million people (more than 42% of the total population of Indonesia).
Javanese is one of the Austronesian languages, but it is not particularly close to other languages and is difficult to classify. Its closest relatives are the neighbouring languages such as Sundanese, Madurese and Balinese. Most speakers of Javanese also speak Indonesian, the standardized form of Malay spoken in Indonesia, for official and commercial purposes as well as a means to communicate with non-Javanese speaking Indonesians.
There are speakers of Javanese in Malaysia (concentrated in the states of Selangor and Johor) and Singapore. Some people of Javanese descent in Suriname (the Dutch colony of Surinam until 1975) speak a creole descendant of the language.
