• To practise how to use your Indonesian persuasively to sell real estate.

Now let’s further practise what a real estate salesperson might say to convince a prospective buyer to make a purchase. There are three components in the sales pitch: 1. the character of the house, 2. its location, and 3. its price.
Don’t forget that the salesperson will try to present the house in the most attractive possible terms, so don’t be afraid to exaggerate, even be outrageously extravagant in your praise of the house as you practise the sentences a sales person might say. The more convincingly you “play act” the better you will master the Indonesian words, patterns and pronunciation.

Also, because you are a salesperson, you need to show “sincere respect” towards your potential customer by addressing him/her not as Anda but as Bapak or Ibu.

1. The character of the house

2. The location of the house

3. The price of the house

Back in Modules 1 and 2 you practised describing where buildings and dwellings are located, and you practised this again in Module 6. In Module 2, beginning Lesson 24, you practised talking about houses, furniture, household appliances and gardens. In Module 4, beginning in Lesson 54, you also practised exchanging opinions and debating, and these skills were further developed at several points in Modules 5 and 6. It will help you make a success of this role play if you thoroughly review all these lessons.

In pairs or small groups, role play a discussion between a real estate salesperson and one or more prospective customers. Initially, the focus of your discussion will be the two houses described on previous pages, the “Joglo” and the “Mutiara”.

The “Joglo” is in the city of Bogor, about 60 km south of Jakarta. The “Mutiara” is in the Depok area near the campus of the University of Indonesia (UI) about halfway between Jakarta and Bogor. This map shows where the two places are.

1. Jalan kereta api dari Jakarta ke selatan.
2. Rumah “Mutiara” lokasinya di perumahan Sawangan Permai Estate tidak jauh dari Depok.
3. Rumah “Joglo” di pusat kota Bogor, kira-kira 60 kilometer di sebelah selatan Jakarta pusat.

The customers are responding to this advertisement.

The real estate agent will make an enthusiastic sales pitch using the models given in this lesson as well as any relevant language resources studied earlier in the course.

As the real estate salesperson makes his/her sales pitch the prospective customers will interrupt using these phrases.

• Maaf, boleh saya bertanya?
• Permisi, boleh saya tanya dulu?
• Nanti dulu Pak/Bu.
• Sebentar, Pak/Bu, …
• Maaf, Pak, saya tidak mengerti.
• Maaf, Bu, saya kurang mengerti.

The role play can be varied. For example, you can have a debate between two real estate agents, one seeking to sell the “Mutiara” and the other the “Joglo”.

You can also bring the debate closer to home by making use of real estate information in your own vicinity.

Listen to the dialogue between Mrs. Kusuma and two real estate agents and answer the following questions without looking at the transcription:

Now click on transkripsi to check our answers:

Transkripsi

	Selamat pagi, Pak. Saya sedang mencari rumah.
	Selamat pagi, Bu. Ibu mencari rumah yang bagaimana?
	Saya mencari rumah yang tidak terlalu jauh dari kota tapi lingkungannya tenang dan udaranya sejuk.
	Wah, rumah yang kami jual ini cocok sekali untuk Ibu. Namanya Rumah Mutiara. Letaknya di Depok, di antara Jakarta dan Bogor.
	Saya rasa sebaiknya Ibu tinggal di Rumah Joglo. Letaknya di Bogor, tidak terlalu jauh dari Jakarta. Rumah di sini besar-besar dan udaranya sejuk.
	Rumah Mutiara ini juga besar dan udaranya cukup sejuk. Letaknya pun dekat dengan Universitas Indonesia.
	Maaf, boleh saya bertanya sebentar?
	Silakan, Ibu.
	Bagaimana Rumah Mutiara? Ada berapa kamar tidur dan kamar mandi?
	Rumah kami cukup besar. Kamar tidurnya empat dan kamar mandinya dua. Ada gudang di halaman belakang namun tidak ada garasi dan kebun.
	Hm, sayang sekali tidak ada kebun. Kalau Rumah Joglo bagaimana?
	Rumah kami lengkap, Bu. Ada kebun dan garasi. Kamar tidurnya tiga dan kamar mandinya satu. Dapurnya pun cukup luas.
	Sebentar, Pak, apakah ada gudang di Rumah Joglo?
	Hm, sayang sekali tidak ada, Bu.
	Hm, baiklah. Bagaimana lalu lintas di sana?
	Dari Bogor, Ibu bisa naik kereta api ke Jakarta. Rumah Joglo cukup dekat dengan stasiun kereta api.
	Kalau di Rumah Mutiara, Ibu hanya perlu naik bus atau taksi untuk sampai ke Jakarta. Lalu lintas tidak terlalu buruk di Depok.
	Baiklah, terima kasih. Saya pikir-pikir dulu, nanti saya kemari lagi. Permisi, Pak.
	Baik, sama-sama, Ibu. Mari.

To complete this IndoLingo exercise, record your voice, then download it and name the file Exercise 99-01. Send it to your IndoLingo Instructor. If you are not subscribed to IndoLingo, you may do this exercise as a written homework assignment.

Task

Suppose you are selling your own house. A potential pembeli (buyer) is asking about the property. Answer his/her questions. You can use the similar pattern in the previous dialogue.?

Pembeli: Selamat pagi. Saya ingin mengetahui mengenai rumah Anda. Di mana letaknya?
Anda: …
Pembeli: Ada berapa kamar tidur dan kamar mandi?
Anda: …
Pembeli: Sebentar, apakah ada gudang di Rumah Joglo?
Anda: …
Pembeli: Hm, baiklah. Bagaimana lalu lintas di sana?
Anda: …
Pembeli: Baiklah, terima kasih. Saya pikir-pikir dulu, nanti saya kemari lagi. Permisi, Pak.
Anda: …

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• To further practise how to talk about a house and its components.

Rumah Mutiara

Previous lessons in the current module gave you practice using the language of buying and selling. We will now bring all these elements together by studying how to describe a house and buy or sell it. Let’s look first at two styles of house that you might find in the suburbs of a city in Indonesia. An ordinary modern middle-class house (let’s call the design the Mutiara or “pearl”) might have a floor plan like this.

Rumah Mutiara

A real estate agent might describe the house like this:

DengarkanBacaL2-Pemahaman

Listen to the sound file and answer the following questions:

1. How many bedrooms does the house have?
2. Does it have a veranda?
3. What other rooms does the house have?
4. Where is it located?
5. What is the price of the house?

A modern middle-class house, the “Mutiara”

Rumah “Mutiara” memiliki tiga kamar tidur, satu di antaranya dengan WC dalam. Di bagian depan rumah ada beranda yang cukup luas, dan ada ruang keluarga yang luas sekali. Rumah ini kamar mandinya modern, lengkap dengan bak, WC dan wastafel. Ada ruang makan dan dapur yang lengkap dengan peralatannya yang modern. Di dalam dapur ada sebuah lemari, sebuah kulkas besar, sebuah kompor dan mesin cuci piring. Di bagian belakang rumah ada kamar dan kamar mandi untuk pembantu. Di samping rumah ada pintu masuk, gang dan gudang.

Rumah ini terletak di Perumahan Sawangan Permai di Jalan Raya Depok Sawangan, Jakarta Selatan. Lokasinya tidak jauh dari pusat kota tetapi dengan suasana desa yang tenang dan indah, dekat dengan Lapangan Golf Sawangan, kolam renang dan juga lapangan tenis. Anda bisa berbelanja di Bogor yang tidak jauh dari Sawangan Permai; dan kampus Universitas Indonesia juga tidak jauh – hanya beberapa menit naik mobil atau bus.

Rumah yang bagus, modern dan lengkap ini sangat sesuai untuk keluarga yang ingin memiliki tempat tinggal bergengsi. Harga rumah hanya 600 juta Rupiah, dan tersedia kredit tanpa bunga. Untuk keterangan lebih lanjut hubungi agen kami di Jalan Wolter Mongonsidi 112.

Now let’s look at another style of house. The design of this one (let’s call it the “Joglo”) is inspired by the design of traditional Javanese houses:

Rumah Joglo

A real estate agent might describe the house like this.

DengarkanBacaL4-Pemahaman

Listen to the sound file and answer the following questions:

1. How many bedrooms does the house have?
2. Does it have a veranda?
3. How many bathrooms are in the house?
4. Where is it located?
5. What is the price of the house?

The “Joglo”, a design inspired by the form of traditional Javanese houses

Apakah Anda bosan dengan rumah tinggal biasa? Ingin memiliki rumah yang istimewa dan lain daripada yang lain? Untuk Anda yang berselera tinggi, ingin menggabungkan masa lampau dan masa kini, dan ingin hidup mewah tanpa mengeluarkan uang banyak, kami menawarkan rumah “Joglo” yang istimewa.

Tamu Anda akan kagum pada saat mereka duduk di ruang pendopo yang luas dan nyaman. Dari pendopo Anda masuk ke ruang keluarga yang lebar dan sejuk. Di belakang ruang keluarga ada tiga kamar tidur yang luas. Di sebelah kanan ada beranda untuk keluarga Anda. Rumah ini memiliki dua kamar mandi: satu untuk keluarga Anda dan satu untuk pembantu. Ada juga dapur, kamar pembantu dan kamar mandi pembantu di bagian belakang rumah.

Lokasinya? Jangan tanya lagi! Rumah ini terletak di pusat kota Bogor dekat pusat belanja dan tidak jauh dari Kebun Raya yang indah. Naik kereta api setengah jam saja Anda sudah sampai di pusat kota Jakarta. Mau apa lagi? Rumah yang keren dan lengkap ini sangat sesuai untuk keluarga yang ingin memiliki tempat tinggal bergengsi. Harganya juga cocok sekali untuk Anda. Hanya Rp. 800 juta. Mau kredit? Melalui Bank Central Asia kami membantu Anda memperoleh kredit dengan bunga yang rendah. Untuk keterangan lebih lanjut hubungi agen kami di: Jalan Dewi Sartika, Bogor.

To complete this IndoLingo exercise, record your voice, then download it and name the file Exercise 98-01. Send it to your IndoLingo Instructor. If you are not subscribed to IndoLingo, you may do this exercise as a written homework assignment.

Task

Accurately translate the following sales pitch into good, enthusiastic Indonesian. If you read the sales pitches above very carefully, you will find all the words and phrases you need to produce a good Indonesian translation. After that, record your voice. Talk as if you were a sales person trying to persuade a customer to buy the house.

• To give more practice talking about the characteristics of people, things and places.

The verb “to have” is one of the most frequent in English. It is hard to say anything in English, even a few sentences, without using the verb “to have”. Try it! See how much – or perhaps how little – you can say without using the verb “to have” in one or other of its various forms: have, has, had and having.

So ubiquitous is “to have” that it is hard for English speakers to imagine a language that has no verb “to have”. Yet Indonesian is such a language (well… almost such a language). Check the entry “have” in George Quinn’s Learners’ Dictionary of Today’s Indonesian for two pages of information and examples showing how Indonesian expresses the meanings and grammatical functions covered by “to have” in English.

One of the principal functions of “to have” in English is to help you talk about the characteristics, attributes and qualities of people, things and places. For example, in English you say:

The immediate impulse of English speakers who want to express these notions in Indonesian is to look for an Indonesian counterpart of “have” and “has”. The word that many will come up with is punya and its more formal twin mempunyai. If you use either of these in trying to express the above notions, native-speaker listeners will probably understand, but they will make a mental note: “This person’s Indonesian is not really idiomatic”.

So how can you express these notions in a more idiomatic way, without using punya or mempunyai? There are two common strategies, and you should get used to using both of them.

1. Use -nya often in tandem with itu or ini. First you mention the topic (person, place, thing you are talking about). This is usually (but not always) followed by ini or itu, then the comment you want to make about the topic. The comment consists of a noun with a -nya suffix and an adjunct. The structure of such sentences looks like this.

noun + itu / ini + noun-nya + adjective / number

Study these examples.

In all examples above, the use of itu is optional. Note that in the last example it is more common to just simply say Suaranya bagus. While -nya marks the subject of the topic-comment clause, it also serves here as the possessor at the same time

2. Use ada, often in combination with the preposition di. First you mention the topic (usually a place) preceded by di. Then you add the new information, the comment, which begins with ada. Very often the topic-comment order is reversed with the ada phrase coming first followed by a phrase beginning with di. Here’s what this structure looks like.

di + noun (name of a place)+ ada + noun (giving information about the place)

or
ada + noun (giving information about a place) [+ di + noun (name of the place)]

You may have noted that in some of the above sentences (Ada tempat?; Ada waktu?) the subject ‘you’ was omitted. It is indeed very common to leave out the subject. When the subject is Bapak or Ibu, it is often replaced with the vocative forms Pak (Sir) and Bu (Ma’am), which are placed at the end of the sentence:

Other examples of topic comment clauses are:

Now let’s look at how these kinds of sentences can appear in a dialogue. Listen to the dialogue several times. Then click on “Transkripsi” and read it out loud. Say it several times trying to memorise it.

Pak Wibowo pays his friend Pak Basuki a visit. The two gentlemen sit in the back veranda of Pak Basuki’s home enjoying a cup of coffee. Pak Basuki asks Pak Wibowo about his house. Their conversation is given below in English. Your job is to translate it into good, idiomatic Indonesian. If you have trouble, the dialogue above will give you all the help you need. But be careful. The conversation below is not exactly the same as the one above. The order of sentences has been jumbled up somewhat, and some of the sentences are different from those above although their vocabulary and grammar are the same.

Well, it’s nice, isn’t it, to drink coffee on the back veranda in the late afternoon.	It is certainly nice and pleasant.
How many bathrooms does your house have?	Only one, but it has two toilets.
Does your house have a tiled roof?	No, it doesn’t. My place has a corrugated iron roof.
Do you have a garage or a yard?	Oh, I don’t have a garage. I don’t even have a car. But I do have a yard.
What’s the yard at your place like?	I’ve got a yard at the back that’s quite wide.

Translate these sentences into English using the verb “to have”.

1. Di garasi itu ada tempat yang cukup untuk dua mobil.
2. Rumah itu atapnya merah.
3. Ada kebun yang cukup besar di belakang rumah itu.
4. Apakah Ibu Sofyan itu anaknya laki-laki atau perempuan?
5. Rumah ini kamar mandinya di lantai atas.

To complete this IndoLingo exercise, record your voice, then download it and name the file Exercise 97-03. Send it to your IndoLingo Instructor. If you are not subscribed to IndoLingo, you may do this exercise as a written homework assignment.

Task

Go back to the dialogue between Pak Wibowo and Pak Basuki. Memorise until you can fluently reproduce it. In the following sound file we have deleted Pak Wibowo’s part. Now you are Pak Wibowo. You can faithfully reproduce what you have memorised, but you can also make changes as long as they make sense in the context of the dialogue. If you wish, you can download the sound file in ogg or mp3 format and edit the sound file using a sound editor such as the free and excellent Audacity.

• To practise how to haggle in Indonesian and role play a shopping visit to a market.

If a vendor quotes a price that is too high a prospective buyer may make an offer of a lower price, after which the vendor may come back with a counter-offer, and so on. This process of offer and counter-offer, or bargaining, is called tawar-menawar. The verb tawarkan (ditawarkan & menawarkan) means “to offer something to someone”. Prices that are negotiable (harga yang boleh ditawar) contrast with harga pas: “fixed prices”. Occasionally, a vendor may indicate that he is now offering the lowest possible price (harga mati) – which you shouldn’t always take at face value. More often it is just an indication that the vendor is not willing to go down much further.

Study how the model sentences on the dialogue below are used in this exchange between a customer and a clothes vendor in a market. While listening to the sound file, try to memorise as much of it as you can. When you stumble upon difficult words, you may look at the transcription but collapse it as soon as you get the idea. After that, continue memorising and try saying the words out loud until they come off smoothly.

DengarkanBacaDaftar KataL1L2

Listen to the dialogue of a gentleman haggling with a woman at the market. Answer the following questions:

• What does he want to buy?
• What colour shall that item have?
• Why is the merchandise so expensive?
• What is the woman‘s opening price?
• What is the price they agree on?

Listen to the dialogue again while reading the transcript.

Selamat pagi, Bu. Ada kemeja?	Ada, Pak. Ada bermacam-macam. Bapak mencari yang bagaimana?
Saya mencari yang bisa dipakai ke kantor.	Ini, Pak. Kainnya halus. Buatan Italia!
Hmmm, boleh saya coba?	Silakan. Wah, cocok sekali untuk Bapak. Bapak kelihatan ganteng sekali.
Tetapi saya tidak suka warnanya. Ada yang berwarna biru?	Ada, Pak. Ini. Wah, ini lebih bagus lagi!
Tetapi ukurannya terlalu kecil. Saya mencari yang lebih besar.	Ini Pak. Ini ukuran besar. Pas untuk Bapak.
Berapa harganya?	Hanya seratus enam puluh ribu rupiah.
Hah!? Mahal sekali, Bu! Mengapa begitu mahal?	Kemeja ini kemeja Armani dari Italia. Keren sekali.
Boleh kurang, Bu?	Yaaa, boleh saja. Tapi harganya sudah murah.
Bagaimana kalau lima puluh ribu saja?	Aduh, Pak! Maaf, tidak bisa. Untuk Bapak harganya seratus empat puluh saja.
Masih mahal itu, Bu. Bisa dikurangi lagi?	Hanya sedikit. Begini, Pak. Khusus untuk Bapak, seratus lima belas ribu.
Hmmm, saya pikir-pikir dulu, ya Bu.	Kalau seratus ribu saja, bagaimana, Pak?
Seratus ribu? Baik. Boleh. Saya minta dua yang berwarna biru.	Baik, Pak. Apakah perlu saya bungkus?
Tidak usah. Terima kasih, Bu. Selamat pagi.	Terima kasih kembali. Selamat pagi.

keméja	shirt
bermacam-macam	all kinds of
halus	smooth, fine, soft-textured
buatan	made in
kelihatan	look, appear
ganteng	handsome
ukuran	size
pas	suitable, perfectly fitting
keren	🙂 cool (because it is fashionable)
dikurangi	to be made less, to become reduced (in price)
khusus	specially
pikir-pikir dulu	to give something a good thought first; let me think about it
bungkus	to wrap
tidak usah	no need

This is the dialogue that you just listened to. Twenty words are underlined. Write out the dialogue replacing the underlined words with other words that make sense in the sentence and that fit into the dialogue as a whole. You can download the dialogue here as a word processor file.

Selamat pagi, Bu. Ada kemeja?	Ada, Pak. Ada bermacam-macam. Bapak mencari yang bagaimana?.
Saya mencari yang bisa dipakai ke kantor.	Ini, Pak. Kainnya halus. Buatan Italia!
Hmmm, boleh saya coba?	Silakan. Wah, cocok sekali untuk Bapak. Bapak kelihatan ganteng sekali.
Tetapi saya tidak suka warnanya. Ada yang berwarna biru?	Ada, Pak. Ini. Wah, ini lebih bagus lagi!
Tetapi ukurannya terlalu kecil. Saya mencari yang lebih besar.	Ini Pak. Ini ukuran besar. Pas untuk Bapak.
Berapa harganya?	Hanya seratus enam puluh ribu rupiah.
Hah!? Mahal sekali, Bu! Mengapa begitu mahal?	Kemeja ini kemeja Armani dari Italia. Keren sekali.
Boleh kurang, Bu?	Yaaa, boleh saja. Tapi harganya sudah murah.
Bagaimana kalau lima puluh ribu saja?	Aduh, Pak! Maaf, tidak bisa. Untuk Bapak harganya seratus empat puluh saja.
Masih mahal itu, Bu. Bisa dikurangi lagi?	Hanya sedikit. Begini, Pak. Khusus untuk Bapak, seratus lima belas rupiah.
Hmmm, saya pikir-pikir dulu, ya Bu.	Kalau seratus ribu saja, bagaimana, Pak?
Seratus ribu? Baik. Boleh. Saya minta dua yang berwarna biru.	Baik, Pak. Apakah perlu saya bungkus?
Tidak usah. Terima kasih, Bu. Selamat pagi.	Terima kasih kembali. Selamat pagi.

To complete this IndoLingo exercise, record your voice, then download it and name the file Exercise 96-02. Send it to your IndoLingo Instructor. If you are not subscribed to IndoLingo, you may do this exercise as a written homework assignment.

Task

Write a brief outline of a conversation at a market in Indonesia. You want to buy 3 manggoes (mangga) and a pineapple (nenas) at a fruit stand. By the time you leave you have bought far more because the lady at the market convinced you that they are much cheaper when you buy them in bulk. This is the dialogue. First complete your part, then finish the rest of the dialogue for both your part and that of the market lady. Record the dialogue and submit it to IndoLingo.

Go back to Lesson 94 and 95 and review the role play based on the short story Kaca Toko, in which Dulah and his wife try to go shopping in an expensive shop. In the story, Dulah’s wife says:

“Mahal-mahal di toko. Lebih baik kita beli di luar, di pasar saja, Kak.”

According to the story, Dulah and his wife go to the market where they buy a kebaya, a sisir and a kain panjang.

Recreate the visit to the market. To the resources you used in the previous role play, add the bargaining skills you have studied in this lesson. Dulah, his wife and a market stall-holder will haggle fiercely to get the best possible price for the garments that change hands. There will also be plenty of talk about colours, sizes and place of manufacture of the clothes on sale. Expand and vary the range of apparel that Dulah and his wife buy.

Make a special point of ensuring that you use numbers, especially big numbers, with confidence and fluency.

This is a similar conversation in a boutique. Read the following dialogue. Then close it, and complete Latihan 3 and 4.

New Vocabulary for this Lesson

Daftar KataL10-Jodohkan 1L11-Jodohkan 2L12-Teka-Teki SilangL13-Cari kataFlashcards

AUDIO
• Please note that all vocabulary items printed in bold may appear in an exam!
• The book icon denotes words predominantly used in the written or formal register.
• A smiling face 🙂 denotes words that are predominantly used in the informal register.

begini	🙂 so, like this, this way (in this particular case begini can best be translated as ‘okay’ or ‘you know what’
dikurangi	to be reduced
harga mati	the lowest possible price
harga pas	a fixed price
lain kali	some other time
ndak	🙂 no, not (an informal variant of tidak)
pikir-pikir; pikir-pikir dulu	to think about something, to consider something; I’ll think about it first
tawar (menawar)	bargaining, haggling
tawar-menawar	to negotiate something (e.g. a price), to ameliorate something
tawarkan (menawarkan)	to offer something to someone

Use the following flashcards to memorise the newly learned words.

Click here to start flashcard deck

[qdeck align=”center”] [q]

begini

[a]

so, like this, this way

[q]

dikurangi

[a]

to be reduced

[q]

harga mati

[a]

the lowest possible price

[q]

harga pas

[a]

a fixed price

[q]

lain kali

[a]

some other time

[q]

ndak

[a]

no, not (informal)

[q]

pikir-pikir

[a]

to consider about something

[q]

tawar

[a]

bargaining

[q]

tawar-menawar

[a]

to negotiate something, to bargain

[q]

tawarkan

[a]

to offer something to someone

[/qdeck]

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