Balinese is an Austronesian language spoken on the Indonesian island of Bali, as well as Northern Nusa Penida, Western Lombok,[4] Southern Sumatra, and Sulawesi.

The 2000 national census recorded 3.3 million people speakers of Balinese, however the Bali Cultural Agency estimated in 2011 that the number of people still using the Balinese language in their daily lives is under 1 million.

[2] According to the 2000 census, the Balinese language is spoken by 3.3 million people in Indonesia, mainly concentrated on the island of Bali and the surrounding areas.

[8] Depending on dialect, the phoneme /t/ is realized as a voiceless alveolar or retroflex stop.

This is in contrast with most other languages in western Indonesia (including Standard Indonesian), which have a dental /t/ patterning with an otherwise alveolar phoneme series.

[8] Even though most basic vocabulary in Balinese and Indonesian originates from Austronesian and Sanskrit, many cognates sound quite different between languages.

For present tense, the adverb jani ("now") can be either definite or indefinite depending on context.

The word buin/bin ("again") is obligatory for puan and telun to clarify that they are not being used for their past tense meanings.

The definite marker can also be attached to modifiers, especially any which conveys "an inherent property of its referent.

[8] The default, unmarked word order of Balinese is Patient Verb Agent.

The nasal-marked word order cannot be an active construction, because it is marked, nor can it be antipassive, because the patient can't be omitted.

There is a true passive voice (Patient Verb Agent) borrowed from Javanese and marked by the verbal prefix ka-.

The second true passive voice (Patient Verb), marked by the verbal prefix ma-, always omits the agent.

[18] According to Bawa (1983:394), the highland dialect is grouped into three main usage areas, namely the eastern, northern, and western regions which are detailed as follows: Overall, there are two Highland sub-dialects that are distinct from varieties spoken in the area mentioned.

Those sub-dialects are Nusa Penida dialect, spoken mostly in Nusa Penida, and Kapara dialect (also called as Bali Kapara) notably spoken in Sembiran village, Tejakula sub-regency, Buleleng Regency with an estimated 4,883 users.

One of the most striking differences is in words like eda (you) and kola (I) in the Nusa Penida dialect.

Speakers of the Nusa Lembongan dialect use words like cai or ci (you) and cang (I).