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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4477 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 | |||||
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 3797 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 10 of 18 24 May 2014 at 1:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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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.
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| JamesS Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 4024 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 | |||||
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 6512 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 | |||||
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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.
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| JamesS Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 4024 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 | |||||
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 4944 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 14 of 18 08 August 2014 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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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.
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| JamesS Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 4024 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 | |||||
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 3596 days ago 8 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Indonesian*, English Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 16 of 18 18 August 2014 at 7:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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 |
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