Indonesian Log

[Soundsmith]

Halo! Saya baru di sini!


I've finally started to pick up Indonesian again after I haven't spoken it for more than 10 years!

I will post stuff about practising and questions that come up as well as just describing the learning process. I hope this can be of use to other users as well, not just being a handy practise environment for myself.

Just a first question for all of you: do you have any online material you can recommend to me? I've looked through some links on here but I woud like to know what sources you really enjoyed using.

[Soundsmith]

LOG # 1: 17 Januari 2012

Kemarin saya belajar kata-kata Indonesia dan saya lihat video di internet untuk dengar lagi bahasa itu. Kini saya menulis teks itu dengan kamus benar. Saya kata-kata bahasa Indonesia bukan kenal! Harus berlatih lagi...

(correct me please!)

I'm using a Dutch textbook on Indonesian which is called Selamat Datang. It is actually a reprinted version of quite an old textbook but it has a lot of translated vocabulary / conversations and interestingly lots of historical and cultural information. It does go into grammer quite precicely but I sometimes prefer to have a very complete overview of a language's grammer so I can see how it all works out before I start using it. Very few textbooks take this approach though...

Knowing Dutch and Spanish is definitely proving an advantage while learning Indonesian because of the many borrowings from Dutch and Portugese. I'm going to give you just a few examples which are cognates between Indonesian and Spanish just because it's funny how far words can travel:

Indonesian - Spanish
keju - queso
meja - mesa
sepatu - zapato
bendera - bandera
mentega - manteca

[pauluszk]

Hai Soundsmith!

I've started learning Indonesian 2 weeks ago. At the begining it was very hard to get something to start with, cuz everything I found was foolishly suggestive to be translated by webtranslators...Furthermore these sites were suspicious, because almost all of them had been able to "use" almost in every language:). So I haven't seen any reliable courses or sites for free.

I decided to go another way, and got to know a guy in Hungary who recommended me a book, named "Teach yourself Indonesian".He sent it me as a pdf file in email. It was written in English for totally starters on zero level...Contains 17 lessons.Right now I'm at the third one, and find Indonesian surprisingly easy.

And I also would have a question to you.The only thing is a bit harder to me, to memorize the Indonesian words.Cuz the texture of them is very differing from for example the English or German words.Did you experience the same when you were starter?So, when will I get used to them?

[Soundsmith]

Terima kasih bagi balasan anda pauluszk!

Bagi saya sukar lagi juga untuk meningat kata Indonesia. Kata-kata ada dua suku kata dan di bahasa Inggris dan bahasa Belanda kata-kata ada satu suku kata. Beberapa kata mudah lagi untuk menigat bagi saya karena asalnya bahasa Belanda. Saya berpikir bahwa kita harus berlatih banyak!


Thanks for your reply pauluszk!

For me it's also very hard to remember many Indonesian words. Many basic words have 2 syllables as opposed to my native language or English where many basic words have just one syllable.Some of them are extremely easy for me though because they are borrowed from Dutch for example words like kantor which means office. I'll probably write some posts just about the basic vocabulary I'm dealing with so maybe that can help us...

[pauluszk]

Okay, it's calming, that I'm not the only to have difficulties on picking up the words...Unfortunately, with my language knowledges, I have no similarities, so it's gonna be a challenge for me.But feel nice to see, that there are some familiar words after all, like "buku" and "foto"

[Soundsmith]

Okay, it's calming, that I'm not the only to have difficulties on picking up the words...Unfortunately, with my language knowledges, I have no similarities, so it's gonna be a challenge for me.But feel nice to see, that there are some familiar words after all, like "buku" and "foto"

And there are many more like "kamera" . What are your reasons for wanting to learn Indonesian? I've got family living in Jakarta and am going to visit them over the summer, that's why I'm picking it up again..

[Soundsmith]

Log # 2: Januari 19th 2012

I made an overview of all the grammar stuff that's explained in the method I'm following and I'm going to talk about some of them one by one in the logs. I'm going to try to make an overview of vocabulary that I want to focus on with it as well. I'll try to make some correct sentences as well.

I've noticed that it's very important in Indonesian to know to which word class something belongs, because some of the endings are used with every word class to do different things to them. So whenever I'm going to list vocabulary I'm going to mention the word class. By the way the translations will be quite free since I'm not using an Indonesian-English dictionary.

Suffix -an used with verbs makes a noun of that verb:

minum - to drink
minuman - a drink / drinks
makan - to eat
makanan - food
pikir - to think
pikiran - thought

Hari ini saya mulai memaklum bahasa Indonesia. Ingin ingat kata lagi yang penting. Mau menulis pikiran saya untuk ulangi.

Vocab:

Auxiliary verbs:
harus - must / have to
bisa - can / may
boleh - can / may
coba - try to
dapat - have / get to / can
hendak - wish
ingin - want / wish to
kembali - again / return to
mau - want to
mulai - begin to / start to
perlu - have to / need to
suka - like to
usah - have to / need to

I left out senang because I don't understand.. does anyone know how to explain this verb?

[pauluszk]

And there are many more like "kamera" . What are your reasons for wanting to learn Indonesian? I've got family living in Jakarta and am going to visit them over the summer, that's why I'm picking it up again..

In Hungary you need 2 foreign languages spoken to go for degree. Anyway I don't want to graduate in Hungary (higher education here is very sucks and expensive), but in the UK (where it's not condition). And to tell you the truth I'm not the "Einstein" of learning languages , so I was finding an easy one, but not esperanto or the language of the hungarian minority.(Called gypsian.) If I would wanna waste a lot of time, my first thing would be the mastering of them. In higher education I want to study Tourism, and there we must mention Indonesia. Finally, a friend of mine recommended Indonesian for me...Maybe that's the language what could be useful and has less European speakers. As a hungarian, picking up and getting be able to speak it will be unique.

Oh, and another important reason of me, that I'm not sure that "exotic" girlz wouldn't be my type you know...

[kabi]

Hello everybody,
Selamat pagi !

That's marvellous to find such forum. I wish to learn more bahasa indonesia here

PAULUSZK '' decided to go another way, and got to know a guy in Hungary who recommended me a book, named "Teach yourself Indonesian".He sent it me as a pdf file in email. It was written in English for totally starters on zero level...Contains 17 lessons.Right now I'm at the third one, and find Indonesian surprisingly easy.''

May I ask you Pauluszk?

Would you mind to send to me this PDF document ?

I check for it in the net and sounds good...

Terima kasih !

Kabi

[pauluszk]

Hai Kabi!
Of course, I can send it you.An email address please.

[kabi]

Hai Kabi!
Of course, I can send it you.An email address please.

Terimah kasih bainak pauluszk,

Here is my email adress (I Don't know if the Admin of the web site allow to put email adress so if I shouldn't please sorry):

Abdelkabi@gmail.com

Thank you again.