I was wondering why was the language name changed from Bahasa Malaysia to Bahasa Melayu? Some of you guys who took SPM in the '90s and early 2000s sat for the Bahasa Malaysia paper. What was the reason for the name change?

Really? I have never heard of anyone asking "do you speak American?"

People learn languages for two reasons:
1) Practical use - Need to use it for business reasons, need to talk to relatives, wife, everyone around them only speaks the language etc.
2) Personal interest - I see many people here like Japanese culture a lot, which is the reason why so many rajin rajin learn Japanese even though the language is hard

To become the number one language of the planet, your country must be a superpower nation that can exert cultural influence over everyone else. The British Empire and USA can do that, which is English is the most widely-spoken language everywhere.

By the way, the reason why Dutch wasn't so widely spoken in Indonesia was because the Dutch had this policy of not teaching Dutch to the locals. The Dutch themselves learnt Bahasa Indonesia as the lingua franca throughout Indonesia while they spoke Dutch among themselves. They decided to follow the British and start the policy of teaching everyone Dutch once World War 2 was over, but then it was too late.

This makes me think of: