The Joys and Challenges of Learning Bahasa Indo

Having come to Jakarta almost every other weekend over the past year, I have managed to garner enough vocabulary to exchange a few pleasantries with Grab drivers and order food at restaurants. But the process of properly retaining the language has not been the smoothest one, with the usual joys and frustrations one encounters when picking up a new language.

Ending a lighter week on Bahasa-learning, I reflect on a few observations over the course of this process.

1. “Bahasa is an easy language”

This is an oft-heard comment in the Indonesian archipelago and Malayan Peninsula, usually by foreigners who have not mastered the language. “It has no grammar” is also not an uncommon addition to the above comment.

The language does offer the appearance of being easy: 

it uses the latin alphabet, and for a large portion of the world’s population this means saving the need to learn a new writing system

It does not utilize tenses like usual Indo-European languages do, hence a verb will have no various forms on it

It is reasonably phonetic, words read as they are written

It has a high amount of loan words from other languages, which helps if you speak those languages

It has fewer words than most languages, limiting the need to retain large amounts of vocab

That is about it. It is not difficult to see why it would be mistaken as being an easier language to learn. But the “easiness” stops pretty much right there.

For instance, having no tenses in reality does not make learning the language easier, it simply means expression of time-related concepts are expressed in other ways.I discussed for 20-30 minutes with my Indonesian tutor on the difference between tadi, barusan and pernah, all expressions of an event happening in the past but at a different space of time.

More intricacies to follow.

2. Rigid Formal Expression

In the standard (formal) form of the language, such as the language one reads in newspapers or publications, the words are big and sentences are long.

Syntax - the very thing that determines the logic of the language - is in a different form from western languages that I am accustomed with. Dissecting the language in more detail - the form of writing often feels like an author turning around in mazes. 

Take an excerpt I was learning another day:

Sebagaimana dikutip Kompas.com dari TechinAsia, Kamis (7/5/2020), Airy mengumumkan akan mengakhiri perjanjian dengan mitranya, menyusul keputusan perusahaan untuk menghentikan kegiatan operasional secara permanen.

Direct English translation as follows: 

“As quoted by Kompas.com from TechinAsia, Thursday (05/07/2020), Airy announced it would terminate the agreement with its partners, following the company's decision to permanently stop operational activities.”

The sentence carries a lot of information and sounds slightly repetitive. Added to that, in the original article the “stop operational activities” statement had been mentioned in the paragraph preceding this one. The syntax is still similar to that of a western language, but the order of statements completely reverses the chronological order, which does not sit so well with the logical brain.

Hence on top of understanding new vocab, the reader is further challenged with absorbing a new logic of writing.

3. Perks of roots and pre & suffixes 

A perk of learning Bahasa words is that a lot of them resolve around the same root, with a limited amount of prefix and suffix. If one knew the root, it would be relatively easy to deduce the word’s meaning. Pe…(person/actor performing the verb), meng...kan (active verb form), di...  (passive verb form), ber… (present progresive) offer a few examples. 

These rules make it easier to deduce meanings of big words, to grasp a bigger picture of words if I know a few basic roots. 

The difficulty lies in the exceptions to the rules, well just like pretty much any language you’d encounter.

4. Syllables and pronunciation

While I don’t know if there is an objective standard for this, Bahasa Indonesia does not feel like a language that is difficult to pronounce. A large reason, I think, lies in its standard vowels of a, e (with two possible pronunciations similar to the French e & é)

, i, o, u, not entirely different from English.

On top of that consonants are also relatively standard, represented by the standard latin alphabet. There are no 4 "sounds" of h like in Arabic, or blowing air from top of the throat like the French r.

Yet in the end pronunciations come down to what language one is native to. If sounds in bahasa are not present in one’s native language, then there would be difficulties pronouncing it.

One interesting phenomenon worth noting is the difference between bahasa Indo and Melayu. It is generally not difficult to recognize which is which when they are being spoken - Indo sounds more like a machine gun with a constant string of bullets being fired off, whereas melayu is more like rapid bouts of shotguns, more broken at each individual word. 

5. Starting from the basics

I started off by just speaking on the streets, with Grab drivers and restaurant waiters. I’d observe billboards and search vocab through translators. Google voice translate comes in handy in more complex conversations.

I reached lesson 16 of Learningindonesian.com. The course is not bad for picking up usual conversation words as a beginner of the language, but it relies largely on listening and the pace is generally quite slow during each lesson. It has the benefit of explaining some cultural/linguistic background of the words, but could benefit with a faster pace.

When I properly settled down in the country, I needed to rapidly increase the basic language level. I first got on Duolingo. Many have downplayed the usefulness of the app. Indeed it has its downsides of not teaching realistic conversations, does not explain grammatical rules of the language, or creating sentences for the sake of creating them (like “The cake is moving”). But what it does well is the light game-like user engagement that drives the user to keep on using it with interest. Beyond that the app does allow one to gain more vocab incrementally, eventually allowing one to garner enough words to get around.

One nature of bahasa learning is, hearing a native speaker speaking, you can seemingly recognize lots of words here and there. But when you try to piece them together, you lose track of what the person is saying.

That is the hurdle to get past. 

6. Journey to advance further

The journey has been a trial and error process.

A void that Duolingo can’t fill are realistic conversation scenarios. Given constraints of developing local social circles as a recent settler, I engaged a tutor with 1-on-1 lessons, slowly working out a way to make them meaningful. The usual experience with a tutor is this - if the tutor is not language-teaching certified, the language learning process will not be fully systematic. This however provides the freedom of structuring the language course together. We started off with topic conversation (which quite quickly runs out due to lack of vocabulary on my part), and turned into learning through structured text like tweets and articles on Kompas. It has proven to be useful, as with frequent practice and self efforts of picking up vocabulary, I can now express a lot more that I previously could not.

A final piece of the puzzle for now are online listening exercises that resemble some realistic conversations. This is essential as despite the conversation practice, they are tailored toward my vocab level. Online listening (like indonesianpod101) exercises allow retaining some commonly used words through listening, which is a scenario that necessitates more instant reaction. Reading an article at least one has the luxury of looking through a translator.

With all the progress, the struggle with vocab continues - in Instagram stories, in advertisement billboards all around.

It just seems paradoxical at the same time. One word in Bahasa has multiple applications (try search up a word in Google translate, or ask for the meaning of the word of pakai). On the other hand, there seems to be so many words and vocab to express a concept - the vocab list feels seemingly endless.

In the end, all theories aside, one just needs to go out there, speak on a daily basis, and get familiarized.

7. Standard vs colloquial

As with most other languages, once one steps out of the comfort of a classroom, colloquial language becomes all over the place.

Twittersphere, chat groups, Instagram stories offer myriad examples of this, which leaves an early learner perplexed. Worse, one would not find such examples in a standard dictionary. Some examples I have learned over this short course:

• Numpang nanya is a polite form to say “I would like to ask,” but nowhere would one find this in a standard bahasa dictionary. Numpang is like short for penumpang, meaning passenger. Nanya comes from Betawi language, and sounds like tanya which means ask in bahasa.
• Letters can be skipped or replaced in the front or in the middle of the word: liat = lihat (meaning to look), where the latter is the standard form. Esok = besok (meaning tomorrow). 
• Adding -in at the back of the word to emphasize the word, eg. saya masakin to emphasize the act of cooking
• Javanese words of gratitude finds their way in social media speak, like suwun (thank you) 

Not to mention the syntax switches as one speaks in a relatively informal setting, simpler and more rapid. 

One thing that is fascinating is the strong influence of regional languages in the daily parlance. There are many who speak Javanese natively, supposedly a more complex language, with formal and informal forms representing their social structure.

8. Bahasa - Indonesian and foreign all the same while

A characteristic one notices rapidly is the high number of borrowed words in Bahasa Indo, which is not often as noticeable in other languages.

Take the naming of the days of the week:

Minggu - Sunday - Portuguese

Senin - Monday - Arabic 

Selasa - Tuesday- Arabic

Rabu - Wednesday - Arabic

Kamis - Thursday - Arabic

Jumat - Friday - Arabic

Sabtu - Saturday - Portuguese

Not sure of the sequence of standardization of this naming, but it reflected strong religious roots and colonial history that influenced formalization of those words. Portuguese influence came from trading activities centuries back, when regional trading activity was centered in Malacca. The Arabic came from Arab traders which introduced Islam to the archipelago. Each people came with their religious influence, and it seems as if it was decided to reflect both traditions directly in the naming of weekdays.

Words with Sanskrit roots are also plentiful in the language. Putri and putra are daughters and sons, istri and suami are wife and husband - you will often hear an Indian expatriate remark. Furthermore, Putri can double as a female name, all the while when she is Muslim (something not likely to occur in India). It seems almost familial names were migrated directly from the Indian subcontinent. It is a stark reminder that not long before Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism kingdoms reigned the archipelago.

In a region where hundreds of local languages are used, Bahasa Indonesia has served as a lingua franca for common parlance, for enabling trading activities among different peoples, for official government usage. It is no wonder that the language has borrowed liberally words from other tongues, all the while forming a logic and syntax of its own.

In a way, this chosen national language tells in its own way how Indonesians became a people, and the many identities they represent forming the country’s national identity. And there lies its beauty.