Hakimtea

On your third day, you are beginning to get used to the new time-zone, the smells and the food. This is about the time that you realize you’re not in Kansas any more and you left Toto back home.

Indonesians are very good at helping you get over culture shock. They like to chat and find out about people and to tell you about themselves.

You will be stopped on the street and asked your age, name and address. Don’t take it too seriously and you don’t have to give a straight answer. These are simply polite questions, to answer Read more…

By your second day, still fuzzy with jet-lag, your employers expect you to at least show up at the office to meet a few people. If you’re not here to work, by now you should be bored enough with the hotel facilities (even if it is the Borobudur) to want to see a little of the town. The most effective way of getting around town is in the back of a shiny Mercedes with an English-speaking, hard-nosed, Jakarta-born driver. If you don’t happen to have both of these handy, flag down the nearest taxi after you have memorized the accompanying vocabulary.

Street names and addresses are rarely sufficient to get you where you are going in Jakarta unless you are going to a very well known building, hotel or shopping center. Remember to learn the local pronunciation of your hotel or street, you may need it to get Read more…

The first priority in Indonesia, believe it or not, is being polite. Not getting the job done, getting to where you are going or getting the correct change. The general wisdom that even a few polite words will return much appreciation is usually true. On the other hand, unkind or loud words in any language will instantly turn you into an invisible being.

Any conversation beyond the vocabulary here assumes that you know more about the language than you actually do. This may put you on the receiving end of a long monologue to which you are expected to nod and make the Read more…

Introduction || Face it–whether you are in Indonesia for one week or for 10 years, it is not only polite and useful to know a little of the language, in many cases, it is outright necessary. If you don’t want to be trapped at the Hotel Borobudur or restricted to traveling with a translator, you need to be able to communicate with that cheerful, friendly, curious populace out there. This booklet provides one approach to learning a very basic level of the Indonesian language, Bahasa Indonesia, with no strain.

I have yet to encounter a structured, functional approach to learning Bahasa Indonesia [Note from SEASite: The text used in NIU’s Indonesian classes, Bahasa Tetanggaku by Ian J. White (Longman: Melbourne, Australia), is “a notional-functional course” in Indonesian; another Read more…