Look who’s talking: Indonesian in Australia

Recently, Indonesian language has begun to make an appearance in Australian popular media. There is evidence too that, after years of decline, student interest in Indonesian language and studying in Indonesia is on the rise. International comparisons suggest that popular culture and language learning may be connected. Bollywood cinema has spread Hindi through India more successfully than the shambolic national language policy. Some argued that the growth of interest in Japanese in the 1980s was fuelled by the global rise of manga comics. More recently, Korean pop music and video games have driven interest in Korean language in Australia.