• To learn about some of the basic differences between Indonesian and English.
• Basic conversation: to practice some common greetings and initial smalltalk.

Welcome to «The Indonesian Way». This is the first of 113 lessons. Learning a new language takes time. Less serious sellers of introductory Indonesian language courses such as Babbel may promise that they will get you “speaking a language in three weeks”. Don’t trust them. They also pretend that their courses are free, but you will end up paying much more than what you pay for «The Indonesian Way». We are also not Rosetta Stone offering dozens of languages following one pattern. We only do one language: Indonesian, and we do it thoroughly.

After finishing this course of 113 lessons you will be familiar with the most prominent features of Indonesian morphology and syntax and you will have mastered approximately 2000 words necessary for communicative competence at the proficiency level B1 of the CEF scale. This is what you will be able to do:

Some learners may even have reached level B2:

And now, without further ado, let’s start Lesson 1:

Indonesian belongs to the Austronesian language family. Many of the basic features of the language are very different to the basic features of English (which belongs to the Indo-European language family). Let’s glance at just a few of these differences.

As a beginning point look at these English sentences.

This is a big farm. It has five barns.

Imagine how you would say these sentences if you were not allowed to use the word “is” (a form of the verb “to be”), or the indefinite article “a”, or the pronoun “it”, or the word “has” (a form of the verb “to have”). Imagine also that “big” must come after “farm”, not before it. Imagine too that “barn” doesn’t have a plural form, that is, you can’t add “-s” to it.

Indonesian doesn’t have a verb “to be”, it doesn’t have articles (words like “a”, “the”, “some” and “any”), and it doesn’t really have a pronoun “it”, at least not in the subject position in a sentence. As for adjectives (words like “fat”, “fast”, “big” etc.), in Indonesian they come after nouns (as they do in French), and nouns are the same in the plural as they are in the singular (like the English noun sheep and nouns in Japanese).

The sounds of Indonesian are different too. Indonesian doesn’t have a /th/ sound, or (for most speakers) a /f/ sound. On the other hand most Indonesians roll or trill the /r/ sound, and they pronounce /t/ without aspiration (without a little hiss or puff of breath) so that it sounds a bit like the English sound /d/. Even the meanings of words in Indonesian are often (in fact usually) somewhat different from their counterparts in English. Take the English word “farm” for example. Strange as it may seem, Indonesian doesn’t have a word that corresponds exactly to the English “farm”. Even common English words, like for example the verb “to have”, are often very difficult to render aptly in Indonesian. In short, if you want to say the two sentences above in authentic Indonesian you have to let go of many basic features of English, and this is not easy to do.

It is very important for you to accept that Indonesian is different, and to work as hard as you can to imitate it accurately, and ultimately to see it as normal. As soon as you can, you must “forget” English: its grammar, its pronunciation, the range of meaning of its words. Remember that what seems (at first) strange to you is perfectly clear, normal and logical to Indonesian speakers.

Already in the very first steps of study you will experience that Indonesian is different. In the dialogue that follows, you will notice that in Indonesian we don’t ask “What is your name?” but “WHO is your name?” Also, in English we say “your name” (your comes in front of name), but in the counterpart Indonesian expression the word order is reversed. You say “name (of) you” (nama Anda). The Indonesian for “please” is also difficult. Indonesian doesn’t have a single exact equivalent for our word “please” but several different words. The word silakan in the dialogue below is just one of three or four different “please-words” in Indonesian. Silakan means something like “feel free to…” or sometimes “help yourself to…” If you want to say “Please open the window” or “Could I have a kilo of rice, please” you have to choose different please-words to make your request polite. (These are studied later in the book.) And when Indonesians want to thank someone they say (translated literally) “receive affection” (terima kasih).

Now read the following short dialogue – a conversation between two Indonesians. Say it out loud several times until the words roll reasonably smoothly off your tongue. Compare the Indonesian with the English translation, and observe how Indonesians say things very differently from English speakers.

When you have finished, click on the “Speak” tab and practice speaking the same dialogue.

Finally complete the Latihan (exercises) L1, L2, and L3 in the tabs.

This is a dictation exercise. Listen carefully to the sentences and write them down in the spaces provided including punctuation marks. A single beep stands for a comma, a double beep for a full stop or a question mark.

Fill in the bubbles in the following conversation with a word or phrase appropriate to the picture. The personal names you choose should be Indonesian names and should be appropriately male or female as indicated in the picture. (You may need to ask around or do a little research to find appropriate Indonesian names. If you can’t immediately think of enough authentic Indonesian names, go to a library or to the internet and copy down some of the personal names you can recognise in Indonesian publications.)

Kenalkan, saya Budi. Siapa nama Anda?— ….	…. — Nama saya Sri Utami.
Silakan ….	Silakan ….
Silakan ….	Silakan ….

Another difference between Indonesian and English is to be found in the way the two languages divide up reality into somewhat different categories. Indeed, if we look at the meanings of English words and Indonesian words, very few words in the core vocabulary of one language have exactly the same meaning in the other language.

Take, for example, the terms used to refer to times of the day. In English we have “morning”, “afternoon”, “evening”, “night” and a number of other terms. In Indonesian we have pagi (from pre-dawn until around 10 or 11:00), siang (from around 11:00 to around 14–15:00), sore (from around 15:00 to nightfall) and malam (from nightfall to dawn). Even though malam refers to the dark hours, Indonesians get up early and hence may greet you with “Selamat Pagi” at 03:00 in the morning!

Preceded by the word selamat, all the above terms can be used in greetings.

When you are greeting someone in Indonesia it is polite to acknowledge that person’s status and use a title. For example, you would greet your own father, or any man who is mature in years with the title Pak. Similarly you would greet your own mother, or any woman who is mature in years, with the title Bu. If you are greeting someone your own age whom you know very well, or if you are greeting a child whom you know well, you can just say that person’s name.

Bu and Pak are derived from the long forms ibu (mother, Lady) and bapak (father, Sir). The short forms Pak and Bu are used in the vocative (when calling someone as in the pictures below) and in combination with proper names: Bu Titin (Mrs or Miss Titin), Pak Wahid (Mr. Wahid) etc.

Here are a couple of examples of this from a primary school textbook showing how children and adults greet each other.

When two adults who know each other, but not particularly well, meet each other they might greet each other and exchange a few words as in the following conversation.

Study the following two conversations by heart. In the first conversation the two individuals use Pak and Bu to address the other, and they use the standard formula baik-baik saja as a reply to apa kabar?. Therefore the conversation is more formal than the second conversation, a dialogue between Nur and Irwan. They already know each other’s name, and address the other by using the person’s name. Irwan also replies to apa kabar? with biasa saja, literally ‘as usual’, but it can also mean ‘I’m hanging in there’ – indicating that this is a less formal conversation (Check the vocabulary cards for this lesson if you don’t recognise a word).

Dialogue 1Dialogue 2L6

Hint: Click on Transkripsi to display a transcription of the sound file.

Transkripsi

Selamat pagi, Bu			Selamat pagi, Pak
Apa kabar?			Baik-baik saja.

Transkripsi

Selamat sore, Iwan.			Selamat sore, Nur
Apa kabar?			Biasa saja.

The following is a listening exercise. There are 12 words and phrases. Listen to them. Do you recognise them? Write them down in the space provided.