Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Bahasa Indonesia

  Tags: Indonesian
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
18 messages over 3 pages: 13  Next >>
Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4671 days ago

1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 9 of 18
24 May 2014 at 12:26pm | IP Logged 
JamesS wrote:
Beware, though, that there is a massive difference between the stuffy formal language and the
language used on the street - this is the flip side to having a relatively simple formal register.


That's because Indonesian is L2 to most Indonesians.
Javanese is L1 of most people in Yogyakarta,
Manado Malay is L1 of most people in North Sulawesi,
and not that long ago Balinese used to be L1 of most people in Bali etc...

Edited by Medulin on 24 May 2014 at 12:31pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Hungringo
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 3991 days ago

168 posts - 329 votes 
Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 10 of 18
24 May 2014 at 1:00pm | IP Logged 
Colloquial Indonesian is not bad, but I would start with Teach Yourself because the TY course - unlike Colloquial and many other courses out there - signals the 2 different ways of pronouncing the letter "e". This might be very useful for beginners especially if they study on their own without other form of exposure to the language.
1 person has voted this message useful



JamesS
Diglot
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4218 days ago

20 posts - 30 votes
Speaks: English*, Indonesian
Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin

 
 Message 11 of 18
27 May 2014 at 3:15am | IP Logged 
Medulin wrote:
JamesS wrote:
Beware, though, that there is a massive difference between the stuffy
formal language and the
language used on the street - this is the flip side to having a relatively simple formal register.


That's because Indonesian is L2 to most Indonesians.
Javanese is L1 of most people in Yogyakarta,
Manado Malay is L1 of most people in North Sulawesi,
and not that long ago Balinese used to be L1 of most people in Bali etc...


I'm talking more about differences within the Indonesian language itself. It is certainly true that most
Indonesians speak one or more regional languages but when they speak Indonesian in informal situations it
is very different to the language used in a formal one. When I was in Yogya, for example, the people at my
home stay told me that although my Indonesian was quite good and it was nice that I could speak some
Javanese, I needed to get up to speed on the Indonesian language as it is used outside of formal contexts.

In Jakarta, which would be of particular interest for our original poster, more and more people have
Indonesian as their 'mother tongue' as it is now such a melting pot of different ethnicities.
2 persons have voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6706 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 12 of 18
27 May 2014 at 12:16pm | IP Logged 
The problem is to find sources and resources in the informal language when you aren't walking the streets of Jakarta. So far I concentrate on non fictional written texts, and they are mostly quite formal. French is in the same situation with an oldfashioned written language and a very different spoken register, but here I can watch TV5 and TF2, where at least some programmes give access to the true voice of people in the street.
2 persons have voted this message useful



JamesS
Diglot
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4218 days ago

20 posts - 30 votes
Speaks: English*, Indonesian
Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin

 
 Message 13 of 18
27 May 2014 at 3:34pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
The problem is to find sources and resources in the informal language when you aren't
walking the streets of Jakarta. So far I concentrate on non fictional written texts, and they are mostly quite
formal. French is in the same situation with an oldfashioned written language and a very different spoken
register, but here I can watch TV5 and TF2, where at least some programmes give access to the true voice of
people in the street.


I've found novels to be somewhat helpful in this regard, particularly when there is a lot of dialog and the topic
is a contemporary one. When I was studying at the Australian National University there was a course on
translating Indonesian and if I remember correctly it did have a specific focus on the Jakartan dialect - I didn't
take the course, though, so I'm not sure if there was a published text or not.

One resource I didn't mention in my earlier post is the podcasts produced by Radio Netherlands - they have a
decent variety of different topics and also produce some transcripts, which can be useful when you're not
quite at the advanced listening.
1 person has voted this message useful



Monox D. I-Fly
Senior Member
Indonesia
monoxdifly.iopc.us
Joined 5138 days ago

762 posts - 664 votes 
Speaks: Indonesian*

 
 Message 14 of 18
08 August 2014 at 4:14pm | IP Logged 
I am a native Indonesian, and compared to other languages Indonesian is indeed easy because it only has about 10% original words (the others are just borrowed words). However, even as a native I am having a hard time regarding the formal language. I just read a book about writing guidance this morning and realized that I have done so many mistakes. Because of that, right now I'm looking for if somewhere in this forum there's a thread for learning Indonesian made by natives. Oh, and if you want to learn more about our informal language, try reading our teenlit novels.
3 persons have voted this message useful



JamesS
Diglot
Newbie
Australia
Joined 4218 days ago

20 posts - 30 votes
Speaks: English*, Indonesian
Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin

 
 Message 15 of 18
10 August 2014 at 12:38am | IP Logged 
Monox D. I-Fly wrote:
I am a native Indonesian, and compared to other languages Indonesian is indeed
easy because it only has about 10% original words (the others are just borrowed words). However, even as a
native I am having a hard time regarding the formal language. I just read a book about writing guidance this
morning and realized that I have done so many mistakes. Because of that, right now I'm looking for if
somewhere in this forum there's a thread for learning Indonesian made by natives. Oh, and if you want to
learn more about our informal language, try reading our teenlit novels.


I don't think your 10% figure is correct but even if it was the fact remains that Indonesian has borrowed from
English, Dutch, Arabic and Sanscrit (among others) so one would have to speak a combination of these
already for it to make learning Indonesian significantly easier.

Still, I think Indonesian's lack of difficulty can be shown by comparing it to other languages. For example,
other languages I'm familiar with have the following features that make them difficult that Indonesian does not
have (or only has in miniscule doses):

Chinese : characters, measure words for nouns, tones, thousands of homophones, generally difficult
pronunciation (eg. zi, si, ci, zhi, xi)
German : genders, noun cases, verb conjugations, declensions of adjectives, compound words
Javanese : levels of politeness
English : inconsistent spelling

(I'm sure I've missed some but you should be able to see my point)

Indonesian uses the Latin script, has no tones, is written phonetically with stress almost always on the
penultimate syllable, has very few difficult sounds (okay, this is hard to make generalisations about but the
only one that comes immediately to mind is syllables that begin with 'sr', which are much more common in
Javanese), it has no grammatical genders and nouns, verbs and adjectives always appear in the same form.

Difficult aspects include the differences between formal and colloquial language, with the latter being different
from city to city, and some inconsistencies with prefixes and suffixes.

So why do natives seem to struggle with the formal language? I'd suggest it is mainly because they just don't
use it and there is not a great deal of pressure to 'speak proper' like there is in other countries.
1 person has voted this message useful



yevonnael_aw
Diglot
Newbie
Indonesia
Joined 3790 days ago

8 posts - 9 votes
Speaks: Indonesian*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Korean

 
 Message 16 of 18
18 August 2014 at 7:26am | IP Logged 
Monox D. I-Fly wrote:
I am a native Indonesian, and compared to other languages Indonesian is indeed easy because it only has about 10% original words (the others are just borrowed words). However, even as a native I am having a hard time regarding the formal language. I just read a book about writing guidance this morning and realized that I have done so many mistakes. Because of that, right now I'm looking for if somewhere in this forum there's a thread for learning Indonesian made by natives. Oh, and if you want to learn more about our informal language, try reading our teenlit novels.


This is true, Indonesian has only about 10% original words.
Indonesia is one of standardized form of Melayu/Malay.

About the formal form of Indonesia, it is true that Indonesia people itself has struggle if asked to speak and write in formal form. We usually use colloquial/informal Indonesia, the colloquial/informal itself diverse between provinces.


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 18 messages over 3 pages: << Prev 13  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.5000 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.