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Rounin wrote:By the way, I wonder if it's possible to find a more comprehensive listing of the data presented during that conference? After all, it would be even more interesting if it turned out that they'd covered other languages as well, such as Mandarin and Indonesian and so on. Anyone have any ideas?
ausdag wrote:Hello, new member here.
I think it's a bit inaccurate to say Indonesian is an easy language. Grammatically it is less complex than a lot of European languages or English. But Indonesian as taught in grammar books is what we call 'Standard Indonesian' - Bahasa Baku. These days more and more people are making a greater distinction between Standard Indonesian and the many varieties of Spoken Indonesian.
These varieties are not 'dialects'. They all constitute Indonesian, ie, Bahasa Indonesia.
Until recently many Indonesian linguists even refused to acknowledge these varieties as legitimate I think because they did not conform to the standards of Standard Indonesian, and because they couldn;t be classified as dialects.
Standard Indonesian is rarely encountered in spoken form except in older movies, some TV dramas TV advertisements and the news and on formal occassions although none of these contexts necessarily exhibit purely Standard Indonesian.
The disparity between Standard Indonesian and the colloquial Jakarta variety is very wide - wider than that between Standard (Oxford) English and most colloquial forms of English.
The Central Java variety (the one I'm most familiar with) is different again, but still Indonesian - not a dialect. It is endowed with a rich array of idiom and inuendo as a result of the influence of Javanese. This is not necessarily in the form of loan words from Javanese, but in the form of ideas translated over into spoken Indonesian.
The Jakarta Chinese variety, which I now encounter on a daily basis in my job as a high school teacher here in Jakarta is different again. It is influenced by a variety of factors and is spoken at a very fast pace.
In fact, it may be fair to say that once you have studied the grammar of Standard Indonesian, in order to progress on to spoken communication there is much you have to 'unlearn'.
My dilemma after years of exposure to non-standard varieties of Indonesian has actually been getting back into Standard Indonesian in order to improve my written Indonesian skills.
This shouldn't be taken as discouragement, but rather encouragement to explore the very interesting array of spoken Indonesian on offer in this country.
Cheers,
DavidG
....oh..did I mention 'Bahasa Gaul' as well? Now there's an interesting variety. There're even a few dictionaries (albeit little ones) devoted to this variety of spoken Indonesian....
Jamie*On wrote:I don't think there is any word loaned from Hindi.
It's the Sanskrit influence: (from Wikipedia)Unlike other loanwords, Sanskrit loanwords have entered the basic vocabulary of Indonesian, so by many these aren't felt as foreign anymore.
They stick out to me as sharp as English words would.
ausdag wrote:The disparity between Standard Indonesian and the colloquial Jakarta variety is very wide - wider than that between Standard (Oxford) English and most colloquial forms of English.
Rounin wrote:But does the Bokmål standard give suggestions on style to begin with? I would have thought that it was mostly a spelling standard, perhaps with a bit of grammar thrown in.
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