Hakimtea

It’s not very difficult to pronounce bahasa Indonesia in a way that it’s understood by even those who never come into contact with foreigners. Remember to keep it simple. Certain sounds we use in English and European languages do not occur in Indonesian at all. Unfortunately, those of us who have grappled with French, Spanish and German are often tempted to pronounce the word as it may sound in another language. For example, selamat datang (”welcome”) does not rhyme with the well-known orange-like juice that accompanied astronauts into space. It also is pronounced with only about four discernible syllables, not five.

With this simple guide, the novice speaker of Indonesian should be able to avoid most of the traps of basic communication. Read more…

You can learn words much faster if you make use of the 190 million eager and willing bahasa Indonesia teachers at your disposal. Finding out the word for “shoe” is a lot easier than more abstract concepts such as “good” and “evil” but at this stage you are still trying to become functional.

Learn five more useful nouns and five more verbs from a reliable phrase book, dictionary, or the word lists in the Appendix.

You should be at the stage now where you can teach someone a little English. Try it! Read more…

For the next three days, you should build a vocabulary that is important to your daily existence. If you spend a lot of time in restaurants, learn the names of food. If you like shopping for local handicrafts, learn their names and substitute into the sentences here.

Learn at least five new nouns and five new verbs that are useful to you. These phrases aren’t guaranteed get you a better room at the Wisma Delima, for that you need a teacher or more time with a phrase book. These phrases, though will ensure that you won’t go hungry on your fifth day.

Before heading out for the day, memorize a couple of new words you will need to know for the day’s activities. Write them down and give youself a quiz. Bring the Read more…

Numbers are handy to know, but most often prices are written on paper or shown on a cash-register or on a calculator. On your fourth day you are not ready to bargain for antiques on Jalan Surabaya!

When spoken, prices are usually in thousands and hundreds (for example Rp. 10,500 is ten thousand, five hundred). Understanding numbers when spoken takes some practice. Another perplexity is that when discussing prices, often the units are omitted. If a figurine is quoted to you as “Enam (six)” and you don’t know for certain whether they are talking about six thousand or six million, you probably shouldn’t be shopping there.

The basic one-to-nine numbers are handy for Read more…

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…