Minangkabau Language

The Minangkabau society has a diglossia situation, whereby they use their native language for everyday conversations, while the Indonesian language is used for most formal occasions, in education, and in writing, even to relatives and friends. Despite widespread use of Indonesian, they have their own mother tongue. The Minangkabau language shares many similar words with Malay, yet it has a distinctive pronunciation and some grammatical differences rendering it unintelligible to Malay speakers.