The Indonesian Language

I feel like talking about the language I speak here.

First of all, as I have mentioned in an earlier entry, Indonesian is actually not the mother tongue of most Indonesians. Since I live on the island of Java, most people here learn Javanese first and then Indonesian in school. Indonesian comes from the Malay but is still in some respects similar to Javanese. I would say that Javanese and Indonesian are about as close as maybe German and Swedish, they have similar roots and some similar words but sound quite different.

Learning Indonesian has shown me just how very related the European languages German, English and French are. All three use articles to define nouns, all of them have tense structures, constant use of subjects and their conjugations, rely heavily on the verbs "to be" and "to have" and use many different words for similar concepts.

Indonesian on the other hand has developed in a completely different environment and is miles away from the structure of the European languages I spoke before coming here.

There are no tenses, there is no conjugation, subjects are not needed to make a sentence grammatically meaningful, the verbs "to have" and "to be" are barely used and many words have many meanings.

Luckily for me this makes the language very easy to learn. Unfortunately for my students this does not work the other way around. It must feel unnatural trying to learn and understand tenses, articles (especially if they are arbitrarily mascuilne or femininie as in French or German) and conjugations if you have never used that kind of grammar before in your mother tongue.

Examples:

I want to eat. -> Mau makan. "want eat"

I want to go there. -> Mau ke sana. "want to there"

embarrassed/shy/ashamed -> malu

I eat. -> saya makan

yesterday I ate -> kemarin saya makan

I will eat tomorrow -> besok saya makan

"besok" is used to indicate that something will happen in the future (though not when exactly) and can mean "tomorrow, next week, next month or even next year"

"kemarin" is used similarly, but for the past. It can mean "yesterday, last week, last month or last year"

To indicate the plural you say the noun twice:

pensil pensil = pencils
buku buku = books
kucing kucing = cats

One thing that I really like about Indonesian is the terms of address for other people. It is considered impolite to address people who are older than you directly with "you" ("Kamu" in Indonesian). The way to address people is to give them titles according to their gender and age:

"Bapak" or "Pak" for older men who already have children. It means father.
"Ibu" or "Bu" for older women who already have children. It means mother.
"Mas" for young men and older men still without children. It means older brother.
"Mbak" for young women and older women still without children. It means older sister.

So if you want ask an older woman where she is going you ask: "Bu, mau ke mana?"

These titles offer you a familiar way to address strangers. Your title becomes your temporary "name" until you introduce yourself. This in turn makes the conversation much more intimate and it is easier to connect to the other person. I have often been helped by random Indonesians in difficult situations and it was always: "Mas mau apa?" "Mas mau ke mana?".

I am very glad to be learning Indonesian and by now I already feel quite fluent. It's a fun language to speak!

all the best to you guys at home

Arnaud