Vocabulary

Javanese has a rich vocabulary, with many foreign loan words as well as the native Austronesian base. Sanskrit has had a deep and lasting impact on the vocabulary of the Javanese language. The "Old Javanese – English Dictionary", written by professor P.J. Zoetmulder in 1982, contains approximately 25,500 entries, over 12,600 of which are borrowings from Sanskrit. Clearly this large number is not an indication of usage, but it is an indication that the Ancient Javanese knew and employed these Sanskrit words in their literary works. In any given Old Javanese literary work, approximately 25% of the vocabulary is derived from Sanskrit. In addition, many Javanese personal names have clearly recognisable Sanskrit roots.
Many Sanskrit words are still in current usage. Modern Javanese speakers refer to much of the Old Javanese and Sanskrit words as kawi words, which may be roughly translated as "literary". However the so-called kawi words also contain some Arabic words. Furthermore there has been significant word borrowing from Arabic, Dutch and Malay as well, but none as extensively as from Sanskrit.
There are far fewer Arabic loanwords in Javanese than in Malay. These Arabic loanwords are usually concerned with Islamic religion, but some words have entered the basic vocabulary, such as pikir ("to think", from the Arabic fikr), badan ("body"), mripat ("eye", thought to be derived from the Arabic ma'rifah, meaning "knowledge" or "vision"). However, these Arabic words typically have native Austronesian and/or Sanskrit equivalents. In the cases mentioned, pikir = galih, idhĕp (Austronesian), manah, cipta, or cita (Sanskrit), badan = awak (Austronesian), slira, sarira, or angga (Sanskrit), and mripat = mata (Austronesian), soca, or netra (Sanskrit).
Dutch loanwords usually have the same form and meaning as in Indonesian, but there are a few exceptions. Consider this table:

Javanese	Indonesian	Dutch	English
pit	sepeda	fiets	bicycle
pit montor	sepeda motor	motorfiets	motorcycle
sepur	kereta api	spoor, i.e. (rail)track	train

The latter is interesting, as the word sepur also exists in Indonesian. The Indonesian word has preserved the literal Dutch meaning of "railway tracks", while the Javanese word follows Dutch figurative use, where "spoor" (lit. "rail") is used as metonymy for "trein" (lit. "train"). (Compare the corresponding metonymic use in English: "to travel by rail" may be used for "to travel by train".)
Malay was the lingua franca of the Indonesian archipelago before the proclamation of Indonesian independence in 1945, and Indonesian, which was based on Malay, is now the official national language of Indonesia. As a consequence, there has been an influx of Malay and Indonesian vocabulary into Javanese recently. Many of these words are concerned with bureaucracy or politics.