Indonesian-Online

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New: Zoom Course

Increase your speaking and listening skills in a small class more…

Uli Kozok

Join our Conversational Online Class in a Small Group
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Starting in 2023 we will offer regular conversational online courses in the Indonesian language using Zoom. Enrolment is limited to maximal 10 students. We will meet three times per week and this is mainly a conversational class, emphasising listening and speaking skills. The courses perfectly complements The Indonesian Way, and each course covers 40 lessons.

We offer a beginner class, and a class for “advanced beginners”. You must be able to do the following for the advanced beginner class:

  1. Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type.
  2. Can introduce yourself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where you live, people you know and things you have.
  3. Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help.

Most students who have completed at least Lesson 20 of The Indonesian Way or have the Indonesian language skills as outlined above are well qualified to enrol in the class.

You will not need any software or anything else to participate in the course. All course materials are included in the price. We will send you the Zoom link to access the course once enrolment in the online class is confirmed.

New Serba-Serbi Nusantara Lesson
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A new lesson was added to Serba Serbi Nusantara, our reader for advanced Indonesian, which now has 35 lessons. In this lesson, and in the next few lessons that we plan to develop, we are focusing on Indonesia, its people, languages, and cultures.

The lesson is entitled “Mengenali Keragaman Suku Bangsa di Indonesia” (Recognising Indonesia’s Ethnic Diversity).

According to the 2010 Population Census, Indonesia has more than one thousand ethnic groups. That alone is already astonishing. But what is really surprising is that the two largest ethnic groups already count for 55% of Indonesia’s population. The largest ethic group is quite well known, and you can find out in the following quiz which one it is (can you guess?). The second largest ethic group, on the other hand, is much lesser known – at least outside of Indonesia.

And what a lot of people don’t know is that the third-largest ethnic group are the Malays. Outside of Indonesia, Malays are always associated with Malaysia, but Indonesia is in fact the homeland of the Malays, and more Malays live in Indonesia than in Malaysia.

Another fact that is relatively seldom known is that the Malay language is a national language in four countries: in Indonesia (where it is called Indonesian), in Malaysia, in Brunei Darussalam, and in Singapore.

Here’s the quiz, as promised:

New Intermediate to Advanced Lessons
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«Indonesian Online» is under constant development. In 2019, the intermediate course «Baca Yuk!» and the advanced reader «Serba Serbi Nusantara» consisted of 23 lessons each. Now, each course has 33 lessons, meaning that we added 20 lessons during the last three years.

Developing one lesson is time consuming. One of the most daunting tasks is to find suitable raw material, usually texts from a newspaper or an online journal, and a short video with good audio sound and little or no background music. Finding an appropriate text and a suitable matching video can take several days. We want the texts to be as authentic as possible, so we have to find texts that are neither too short nor too long, are written in good Indonesian with only a few mistakes. This is important because we want the texts to be as authentic as possible, but for the majority of texts some corrections are necessary. Spelling and other mistakes are unfortunately the norm with most Indonesian newspapers and magazines.

After selecting and editing a text, a voice recording of the text must be taken, and only then can we start to develop the exercises, cultural notes, etc. Developing one new lesson takes on average 40 hours.

The most recent developed lessons are “Kulit Putih Perempuan Indonesia” in «Serba Serbi Nusantara», while “Cerita Pendek: Emak Ingin Naik Haji”, parts (1), (2), and (3) were completely overhauled. In «Baca Yuk!», “Padi” is the most recent developed lesson.

«Baca Yuk!» is the perfect continuation of «The Indonesian Way», whereas «Serba Serbi Nusantara» should only be used by students who have a proficiency of at least B1, and preferably B2 on the CEFR scale. They cost $70 each, and you can also purchase them together with «Anak Jalanan», «Aneka Baca», and «Ada Apa dengan Cinta?» in a package called «Bahan Tingkat Atas» for $120. All «Bahan Tingkat Atas» materials together provide you with approximately 350 learning hours.

Where is Indonesian taught?
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Uli Kozok 26/2/2022
Each time when you log in to Indonesian Online account, the IP from where you log on is recorded, and hence we know from what country you accessed indonesian-online.

We don’t consistently keep track from where our customers log in, but within the last four days, we had log-ins from 14 countries: 6 from Asia: Brunei Darussalam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Viet Nam; 4 from Europe: Spain, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom; 2 from the Americas: Canada, USA. We also had multiple logins from Australia.

By and large, our customers are fairly equally divided between Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. But within these geopolitical regions, there are large differences. In the Americas, almost all of our customers are from Canada and the USA, and almost none from Latin America.

I am not aware that we have a single customer from Latin America, Africa, or South Asia, nor have I seen an IP address pointing to one of the countries of those regions. The same is true for the dozens of countries where Arabic, Persian, and Turkic languages are spoken.

And that brings us to a related topic. In what countries is Indonesian taught? This question is difficult to answer as the picture constantly changes, and there are too many private language schools. So let’s concentrate on research universities where Indonesian is taught.

We found 13 countries that have at least one university that teaches Indonesian. Most are located in Asia, followed by Australia and Europe:

1. East Asia (at least 15 universities in 3 countries)
1. Australia (15 universities in 1 country)
3. Western Europe (12 universities in 4 countries)
4. North America (9 universities in 1 country)
5. Eastern Europe (2 universities in 1 country)
6. Southeast Asia (2 universities in 2 countries)
7. Western Asia (1 university)

By far the single most important country for Indonesian language studies is still Australia where Indonesian is not only taught at most research universities but also at high schools, and in some places also at intermediate and primary schools. Each year, Indonesian is taught to about 100,000 students in Australia. Compare that to less than 500 for the entire United States.

In Europe, the only country where the Indonesian language is taught at more than two universities is Germany. Indonesian is taught at universities in Berlin, Bonn, Cologne, Constance, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Leipzig, and Passau, and many of these universities afford full professors in Indonesian. Unfortunately Indonesian language studies are rare outside of Germany. One should think that teaching and learning Indonesian is widespread in the Netherlands, but there is only one Indonesian language program at Leiden University. In France, Indonesian is taught in Paris and La Rochelle, and in Russia in Moscow and Leningrad. Among the remaining 40 European countries, Indonesian is only taught at one university in Naples, Italy.

In the United States, nine universities (UCL Berkeley, UCL Los Angeles, Cornell, Hawaii, Michigan, Yale, Ohio, Northern Illinois, Wisconsin) offer permanent Indonesian language courses, and only at one university is Indonesian taught by a professor — and that will most likely change once I retire.

In Asia, Indonesian is taught in only six countries: China, Israel, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Thailand. China alone is reported to have more than 10 universities with Indonesian language programs.

Do you know of any other places where Indonesian is taught? Please let us know!

A wonderful Indonesian Online review
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We are very pleased that the Indonesian language textbooks in indonesian-online.com have received almost exclusively good to excellent reviews. A few months ago we were absolutely thrilled. After having received about 50 user-written testimonials within about five years, our rating stood at 5.0. Yes, five point zero.

Over years and years we had only positive review but we knew that one day we would receive a not-so-stelar testimonial. And then it came. It was not a four, three, or a two star review. It was a one star review, the lowest rating possible, that instantly lowered our rating to 4.9.

After that we had no more rating less than four stars, but even four stars can quickly lower your ratings when you start from a relatively high ceiling.

And so it happened, After 71 testimonials we’re now at 4.8. Not devastating at all, but sobering.

The more were we enjoyed when today the 72th testimonial arrived. I immediately recognised the sender’s name. He was one of our first-hour clients who, after having stopped learning Indonesian decided to resume his course a few years later. This is what he wrote about his experience:

I have come back to using Indonesian Online after a break of some years, and am so grateful that this resource is still out there. I found my old review of some years ago, and thought to post it again, as it expresses my admiration for this fantastic set of resources:

Platinum subscription is perfect!

If you think «The Indonesian Way» is great, just wait till you try the next two courses in the Indonesian Online series. Wow! Having completed the 113 lessons of The Indonesian Way, and looking for something to take me to the next level, I completed the 22 lessons of «Baca Yuk!», and now am working my way through the 30 lessons of «Aneka Baca».

I am just amazed at how extensive the whole set-up of Indonesian Online is. And so the reason for this review is to recommend that anyone serious about learning Indonesian should take the Platinum subscription. The resources really are endless – I see there are still two levels of readings and mixed media ahead of me. The quality, excellent as it is in «The Indonesian Way», to be honest, gets even better as one gets into the more advanced offerings. And I am impressed by the way that when there is any kind of technical issue, at my end or on the web, I get almost immediate responses from the team and personalised assistance until things are sorted out. Couldn’t be happier with my subscription.
Hendrik Ferreira

This is so nice. Thank you, Hendrik, for your encouraging words.

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