Rudolf Mrázek > Quotes

“Malay, as the first language in the late-colonial Indies, was spoken merely in parts of Sumatra, and a dialect of Malay was spoken by some in the big cosmopolitan cities, primarily in Batavia. For most of its users, Malay was a practical, and not very warm, medium of communication with strangers. In other words, it was a language of the road.”
― Rudolf Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony