How Difficult Is Indonesian? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

How Difficult Is Indonesian?
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

35 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5

hamba
Diglot
Newbie
Australia
Joined 6513 days ago
22 posts - 32 votes
Speaks: English*, Indonesian
Studies: Arabic (classical), Urdu

Message 33 of 35

11 April 2015 at 11:07am | IP Logged

Hi Brian, go for it, indonesian is a satisfying language to learn.At the standard level it is
regular and you have a very logical verb system. It has been taught and learnt for centuries
by foreigners so you will love it. I recommend you use this course which has no competitors
in regard to format and quality. It has been put together by 2 respected indonesian language
teachers and as an Indonesian language teacher I often refer to this course in my teaching.It
is also free ( a rare commodity these days, something which is real quality being offered for
free).

ipll.manoa.hawaii.edu/tiw/

You can get by in indonesian on all islands in indonesia, malaysia, brunei, south thailand,
parts of cambodia and vietnam which have malay/indonesian communities. In the uk there are
1000's of students who will love the idea you want to learn their language. Good luck!!
5 persons have voted this message useful

Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6485 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 34 of 35

11 April 2015 at 12:08pm | IP Logged

I would like to repeat the argument about Bahasa Indonesia which I presented: first I mentioned the many words you have to learn from scratch because they aren't related in any way to those in European languages, then enumeratered several points where the grammar was easy, and this reminded me of English. The heavy use of derivation through affixes in Indonesian is certainly a difference, but as Stolan writes it is fairly "very transparent and watery in a way". And the almost totally phonematic orthography of Indonesian is a welcome bonus, even though it sets it apart from English with its arcane spelling rules. So the difficulties in learning the language would have to be in the idiomatics, I reasoned. Plus of course the sheer amount of new words to learn.

But I wrote that several years ago. Since then I have regularly worked with Bahasa Indonesia (and in a few cases also Bahasa Melayu) and my basic impression is still that Indonesian and English in many ways function in the same way. You have to get accostumed to a few things, like the use of adverbials instead of verbal inflection to indicate tempus or the ubiquitous "yang", but if anything I have had less trouble with the idiomatics than expected. The task of learning enough words has been roughly of the size I expected - if anything there are more disguised loanwords than expected, but I still have to do wordlists to boost my vocabulary.

I do however become slightly worried when I see Medulin and others refer to important regional and cultural differences, but I almost exclusively study written sources and there the local particularities aren't nearly as troublesome as they would be in actual street conversations. And slang is hard to learn in any languages without actually living in a suitable country.

So in spite of Stolan's warnings I still think that English with its fluid word categories, minimal morphology and devilish idiomatics is a good background for getting to grips with a language like Indonesian.

Edited by Iversen on 11 April 2015 at 12:27pm
2 persons have voted this message useful

Stolan
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3814 days ago
274 posts - 368 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots
Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese

Message 35 of 35

11 April 2015 at 10:41pm | IP Logged

Iversen wrote:

I would like to repeat the argument about Bahasa Indonesia which I
presented: first I mentioned the many words you have to learn from scratch because
they aren't related in any way to those in European languages, then enumeratered
several points where the grammar was easy, and this reminded me of English. The heavy
use of derivation through affixes in Indonesian is certainly a difference, but as
Stolan writes it is fairly "very transparent and watery in a way". And the almost
totally phonematic orthography of Indonesian is a welcome bonus, even though it sets
it apart from English with its arcane spelling rules. So the difficulties in learning
the language would have to be in the idiomatics, I reasoned. Plus of course the sheer
amount of new words to learn.

But I wrote that several years ago. Since then I have regularly worked with Bahasa
Indonesia (and in a few cases also Bahasa Melayu) and my basic impression is still
that Indonesian and English in many ways function in the same way. You have to get
accostumed to a few things, like the use of adverbials instead of verbal inflection to
indicate tempus or the ubiquitous "yang", but if anything I have had less trouble with
the idiomatics than expected. The task of learning enough words has been roughly of
the size I expected - if anything there are more disguised loanwords than expected,
but I still have to do wordlists to boost my vocabulary.

I do however become slightly worried when I see Medulin and others refer to important
regional and cultural differences, but I almost exclusively study written sources and
there the local particularities aren't nearly as troublesome as they would be in
actual street conversations. And slang is hard to learn in any languages without
actually living in a suitable country.

So in spite of Stolan's warnings I still think that English with its fluid word
categories, minimal morphology and devilish idiomatics is a good background for
getting to grips with a language like Indonesian.

Warning? Well I may have gotten across the wrong idea. I would also say Indonesian is
a good background to see what English will be since the situation that got Indonesian
where it is applies to English, but the whole area seems to be leaning towards
Indonesian-types, something like Tagalog far off in the Philipines has more in common
with Indonesian in the mechanical aspect of the morphology and phonetics despite
never undergoing simplification (note Tagalog is still harder to learn).
One wonders why languages in deeper South-east asia and papua new guinea, while
complex as all languages are, aren't gigantic beasts in their number of phonemes and
irregularity like those in western California.

Edited by Stolan on 11 April 2015 at 10:44pm

1 person has voted this message useful

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