Archives for 09/07/2020

A few weeks ago I had to sit in a Samoan language class for evaluating purposes. The teacher explained that in the Samoan language susu is the word for ‘milk’. It is hence exactly the same word as in Indonesian.

Samoan and Malay—Two Austronesian Languages

Samoan and Malay (Indonesian) are both descendants of the same language family, which is called Austronesian (“The Southern Islands”). Essential and frequently used words tend to be conservative and do not change easily. So the words mata (eye), lima (five) are identical to Indonesian while other words have undergone slight phonetic changes. The Indonesian-Malay sepuluh (ten) has become sefulu in Samoan, and Malay words that have a final consonant, see that consonant lost in Samoan: langit (sky) became lagi (pronounced langi).

The fact that susu has the same meaning in Indonesian and Samoan is not surprising. But what really surprised me is, that the teacher explained further that the word susu, besides ‘milk’, also means ‘female breast’. This is again, exactly the same meaning as in Malay-Indonesian.

Other words for female breast are payudara, buah dada, and tetek.

‘To suck at the breast or udder, to suckle, breastfeed’ is either menyusu or menetek. ‘

To nourish at the breast, to nurse, breastfeed’ is menyusui or meneteki

Menetek and menyusu are intransitive words, that is, they cannot take an object:

We have added yet another feature to The Indonesian Way. Almost every lessons has one or more exercises which are always named like Exercise 04-01 etc. To many of these exercises we have added a voice recording feature. In the exercise a certain task is given, which contains the instruction to record a few sentences. For instance in Exercise 04-02 (Lesson 04 of The Indonesian Way), the following instruction is given:

Listen to each of the ten items below and repeat them. Each item gives you the name of a common food or drink. Insert this word after the verb makan or minum in a sentence like the sentences practised in the substitution exercise above. For example, if the cue word is ikan you might record something like: Saya suka makan ikan di pasar.

You can go ahead and add further sentences with slight modifications: Saya suka minum es cendol di Pasar Beringin. Ibu saya suka makan ikan goreng di Rumah Makan Sentosa, etc. Using the built-in voice recorder you can record the sentences as many times as you want, and you can listen to them and you can even download them.

If you are not sure whether your pronunciation, word choice, or grammar is 100% correct, you can register with IndoLingo and send the file per email to the IndoLingo instructor. She (or he) is a native speaker, and will respond to you in voice recording (and if necessary also in writing). This additional service is available for a small fee per IndoLingo assignment.

This is how the recording button looks like. Try it out right here!

Dear all,

There are four announcements today:

Testimonials – Terima Kasih

This is number one. I don’t know if you have ever looked at our testimonials, but we, the «Indonesian Way» team, feel truely honoured that we have received so many wonderful testimonials. It is hard to believe, but so far «Indonesian Way» has received a rating of 4.9 out of 5 points. This is wonderful! Thank you so much.

Quizzes for Each Module

We have just finished adding a new component to «The Indonesian Way»: you can now take a test after each of the eight modules. Each of the eight quizzes has twenty questions, and after each test you will receive a grade. If you don’t get an A or B, don’t be too frustrated. The tests may be on the difficult side. Let me know what you think of them. If you get an A then you can be very proud of your achievement!

To access the eight quizzes, you have to log in to The Indonesian Way. They are in the navigation bar to the left, always afer the last lesson of each module.

Find the Word

You certainly know the word search puzzles where you have to find hidden words among a square full with letters. Now we are adding them to «The Indonesian Way». Each lesson will soon have one lesson.

Gamification of «The Indonesian Way»

Have you ever heard of gamification? This seems to be one of the most recent trends in educational technologies. I am sure you know this already from online games, but it is relatively new in education.

When you complete certain tasks, you get credits, but you can also loose credits, for instance by not logging in at least once a week. We have just started and don’t yet know exactly where this will lead to, but the purpose is to increase motivation by offering badges for completing challenging tasks. Learners who receive most badges will receive certificates and other incentives. This will take some time to implement, so stay tuned!

Honolulu, 12-August-2019

I would like to call your attention to a brand new dictionary that has become available through the Internet as an Open Access Publication:

Title of Publication: A Dictionary of Indonesian Prepositional Constructions
Authors: dr.Totok Suhardijanto (Universitas Indonesia, Depok), Miel Slager, m.hum. (formerly Utrecht University, the Netherlands)
Date: 22 October 2019
Download link: https://zenodo.org/record/3515813#.Xa7A3uj7SuA

I have personally examined the dictionary and was quite impressed. The world of Indonesian prepositions is not quite as complex as English prepositions which are a nightmare to any learner. Yet, most learners, including some of the most advanced learners, struggle with prepositions such as akan and atas. And please note that it is not correct to use sama to substitute any preposition. While it is true that sama is a very versatile preposition, you can only use it in colloquial speech.

So, go ahead and download this very impressive dictionary and use it, especially once you have finished with «The Indonesian Way&raquo and you progress to Aneka Baca, Baca Yuk, or Serba Serbi Nusantara which are our textbooks for intermediate and advanced Indonesian.

Note that the book was launched on 22 October 2019, just 5 days ago. So hurry up and become one of the very first users 🙂

One of the authors, Miel Slager, also is a long-time member of Indonesian Online!

A few weeks ago, Stuart, one of the indonesian-online subscribers, wrote to me complaining that
“it is quite difficult to keep track of what lesson has been completed and get an understanding of how you are going.”

No doubt, Stuart is right, and this shortcoming has bothered me for a long time. So I took his suggestions by heart and asked my developer whether he could come up with a solution.

So, this is what he has done: 1.) First of all, in the navigation list in the sidebar where all lessons are listed by number, all lessons that you visited before, are highlighted in red. Look at the picture, Here it is indicated that I already looked at Lesson 48, but none of the other Bahasa Indonesia lessons.

This alone is already very helpful. But the developer did more: 2.) Now, by default, whenever you log in to Indonesian Online, it takes you back to the page that you last visited.

Without any doubt, content-wise Indonesian-Online stands well above all its competitors. Even big names such as Duolingo, Babbel, or Rosetta Stone, fade when compared against Indonesian Online (content and price-wise). However, when it comes to design, these companies often do have an advantage.

This is mainly due to the fact that most coding is done by myself, the principal author, with the assistance of Age, who is located in Bandung, and who also runs the tutorials.

Hiring a developer is expensive and with the limited revenues at our disposal, we typically hire a developer only when my limited expertise in html doesn’t allow me to do something myself.

With the implementation of these new functionalities, we should have narrowed the distance to our competitors.

Remember where to log in and log out? Right on the main page it says Login/out in big letters as can be seen on the image.

Once you are logged in, a pop-up window will appear where you type in your credentials: your username or your email address, and your password.

Do you see “Remember me?” in the image to the left? If you check this box, you will not be logged out for the next 60 days. I use this all the time as I hate to be logged out too soon, but this method also has its drawbacks.

Obviously, you don’t want to activate this on a public computer. You should also NOT activate this if you want to take advantage of our new feature which will remember the last page you have visited. Remember that it will only take you back to the last page before you logged out.

So it’s probably a good idea to log out once you are done for the day.

And a final note, an alternative way to log in, which comes very handy in case the front-page login does not work (which can happen), is by typing in:

This is the most reliable way to log in and out, or change your password.