[tex-hyphen] should bahasa be a synonym for Indonesian?

[Philip Taylor]

Jonathan Kew wrote:

> Yes, that's entirely possible, although the OED does define the
> "standalone" word. Still, I'm familiar with this use of "bahasa" alone
> from plenty of other contexts, too (sorry, I don't have citations on
> hand) - though it could reasonably be argued that they're all examples
> of elliptical usage.
> 
> If such an elliptical usage becomes sufficiently well-established,
> however, surely it has the effect of creating a new definition of the
> shortened term. I'd suggest that the same thing has happened to the word
> "American", for example, via the phrase "American English".

Agreed.  And much the same has happened with "creole", of course,
although its extension does not define it as a specific language
but instead as "[a] language that has developed from the mixing of two
or more parent languages and has come to be the first language of a
community, typically arising as the result of contact between the
language of a dominant group (historically often a European colonizer)
and that (or those) of a subordinate group (often the colonized people,
or a slave population)." [Source: OED.Com]

Philip Taylor