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Bahasa Indonesia/Bahasa Melayu

Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu, or in English, Indonesian and Maylay, are as you might guess, the languages of Indonesia and Malaysia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia It is spoken by around 230 million people, making it the most spoken language in southeast Asia, and one of the top 10 languages of the world.

Information

Indonesian is a standardized dialect of Malaysian, based off of the dialect around the capitol Jakarta, similar to the way that standard Japanese was based off the Tokyo dialect, or Standard Mandarin based off the Beijing dialect. There are hundereds of languages in Indonesia, and this standardized form is spoken by most people along with their local dialect. It is the language of business along with English, and the common language that unites a land filled with hundreds of separate languages, making communication and organization possible.

Indonesian is actually as I said, a standardized dialect of the Malay language. Indonesian and Malaysian are nearly identical languages. They are almost completely mutually intelligible. The difference between them is only slightly bigger than that of American English and British English. In America, an elevator, in Britain, a lift. In Indonesia, you say 'bisa', in Malaysia 'boleh'. Just little word choices like that are nearly all that separate them,

The pronunciation of the two languages is basically identical, along with grammar, the main difference being vocabulary choice. So if you learn Indonesian, if you take 10 minutes to learn the Malaysian equivalents of a few words, you know Malaysian. So if you learn one, you learn 95% of the other. Quite nifty, eh?

Indonesia and Malaysia is mainly a Muslim country, the biggest one outside the middle east, so it contains many words borrowed from Arabic. Also, a long time ago when the influence of Sanskrit, the now dead classical language of India, was much stronger, many words were borrowed from Sanskrit to Indonesian. And because Hindi is a direct descendant of Sanskrit, today there are many cognates between the two languages. Take for example, the name of the language, Bahasa Indonesia. 'Bahasa' means language, and is derived from the Hindi/Sanskrit word bhasa. Many of these words are so integrated into the language that most Indonesians aren't aware at all that they are borrowed, and consider them to be native Indonesian words. Also, because of the Dutch colonization, there are many Dutch loanwords integrated as well. The Dutch were the ones that changed the writing system to the Latin alphabet. Originally, it was a version of the Arabic script called Jawi, which is still used to a very small extent.

(If anyone knows anything about Jawi, tell me! There is basically no information about it, and I'd like to learn it.)

Indonesian is a very easy language for an English speaker to learn. It has basically no conjugations, simple grammar, pronunciation, writing, and no tones or any funky quirks like that. I have even heard it called possibly the easiest language in the world. I wouldn't go that far, but it really is that easy. If you really tried, and you lived in Indonesia, I wouldn't be suprised if you could become basically fluent, or at least functional, in little more than a year.

So enough with my rant, onto the actual language.

Pronunciation & Writing

Indonesian is written with the Latin alphabet, and is nearly totally phonetic. Should be no problem at all if you can already read English.


Consonants

I will point out that my pronunciation equivalents are based off of American English. In order to try not to confuse any British or people from somewhere else, I'll put the IPA as well. Just ask if you aren't sure of something.

b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, v, w, y, and z are all basically the same as English, no matter the dialect.


Differences

c - like the "ch" of "chair"
r - a rolled r, as in Spanish
kh - like the "ch" of "loch" or bach", IPA /x/
ng - like the "ng" of "hanger", IPA /ŋ/
ngg - same as the "ng" of "long", the extra end g sound included. Notice that in "hanger", the little final "g" sound as in "long" is not there. That is an important difference.
sy - like the "sh" of "shin"


Other notes

When an H is at the end of a word, it is pronounced as a little puff of air at the end. Try saying "la", but keep breathing afterward, making it more of a "lah". Its hard to describe, when you hear it you'll get it. Look at the websites below for sound examples.

When K is at the end of the word, it becomes a glottal stop. IPA /ʔ/. That means the K is not pronounced, but represents where the voice is abruptly stopped. I can't think of a good English equivalent...

P and T are unaspirated. This means that the little puff of air that you do after you say it shouldn't be there. If you don't know what I mean, hold a piece of paper in front of your mouth and say a word ending in a P or T. If you do a little puff at the end of the word that moves the paper, you are aspirating it. Don't do that!

If you know IPA, they are /p/ and /t/, NOT /pʰ/ and /tʰ/ as they often are in English.

D and T are dental, meaning that they are said with the tip of the tounge on the back of your front teeth, instead of the little ridge behind your teeth like in English. This makes it a slightly lighter sounding sound. I believe that those sounds are dental also in Spanish, French, and most of the romance languages. So if you speak one of those, pronounce them the same. If I'm totally wrong on that, someone tell me.

G is aways hard, like in "get", never a J sound as in "register".

(If you happen to speak Hindi, Urdu, or Sanskrit, the unaspirated dental consonants are the same in Indonesian and Malay.)

Capitalization rules are the same.


Vowels

A - like the A of fall, IPA /aː/
I - like the ee of meet IPA /iː/
O - like the O of or, IPA /o/

U - like the oo of cool IPA /uː/
E - This is the weird one. Most of the time, it is like the U of but, a schwa sound. Otherwise, it is said as the E of egg. It is not distinguished in writing, you have to memorize when to use which. I will distinguish here by making the egg E italicized. But when you practice writing yourself, don't do that, just memorize it.

So e is egg,IPA /e/ and e is but,IPA /ə/


For dipthongs, two vowels put next to each other, just say one vowel and then the other smoothly, don't pronounce it any differently.

When a vowel is duplicated, like in the word maaf, excuse me/sorry, it is said with a little pause between the vowels, similar to the glottal stop of the final K. So "maaf" is not "maa~f" with a continuous A, its "ma-af", with a little stop between.

(Sometimes, /o/ can sound more like /ɔ/ and /uː/ more like /ʊ/. Also sometimes the /e/ sounds more like the French é. But, not a diphthong. Don't worry about it too much. These little things are more regional variances, and the way I have put is the basic standard way. At least I think so.)



Stress

To stress a syllable, just say it a bit louder and longer, as you would in English. If you have never thought about that, heres and example. Think about the word "syllable". When you say it, the "si" at the beginning is said with more emphasis, right? It is a bit louder and longer than the other syllables of the word. English usually places the stressed syllable at the beginning of a word, but Indonesian places it on the penultimate, or second to last syllable. So berbicara, to speak, is said berbiCAra, with the stress on the CA. If the penultimate syllable is a schwa, the stress moves to the final syllable.

There, you can read and write Indonesian now. Asyik! (Fantastic!)

In retrospect, I feel like my pronunciation guide was a big scatterbrained. In super summary of all this - pronounce the vowels as in Japanese or Spanish, dentalize your T's and D's, don't over aspirate, and be aware of letters said different from English, such as C.

Honestly, just listen to the pronunciation examples from the websites below and you'll get it easily. I'm just kind of over complicating it.

~

UPDATE: I forgot to include one bit about pronunciation. A final K in a word becomes an unaspirated glottal stop, and is never pronounced as in English.

Also, about this pronunciation guide, I should mention. In actual spoken Indonesian Malaysian, things are not pronounced exactly like this. What I am teaching, at least for now, is the standard correct Indonesian, learned in school and the type taught to foreigners learning it, used in business and stuff like that. In the informal spoken language, there is much more word borrowing , because there is a humongous amount of variety of people who speak it as a second language. And also, many abbreviations and odd things like that are used that may seem totally nonsensical. And besides that, the colloquial pronunciation tends to differ slightly, like words that end in 'uh' tend to be said as 'o' instead.That is explained some in the wikipedia article. But its nothing to worry about. And there are some regional variations, such as in Malaysia, it is common for a final A to become ə. But don't worry about that stuff now, you should learn the correct way first of course.
I guess the point is, this isn't the end all guide to everything, there are a lot of random nuances of things that I don't go over that there is no point in explaining at this point.

~


Websites

Some good websites for Indonesian. Look at them! The top 2 are the best.

http://pgoh13.free.fr/malay_course2.php
http://www.ielanguages.com/indonesian.html
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/flin/pronunciation/guide_to_pronunciation_of_indone.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahasa_Indonesia
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/flin/
http://www.gimonca.com/sejarah/pronounce.html
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Indonesian/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_Malay_and_Indonesian

Dictionaries & Stuff
http://www.kamus-online.com/
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Indonesian/tataBahasa/dictionary/Default.htm
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~bule/bahasa/search.php
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Indonesian/TataBahasa/dictionary/english__indonesian_lookup_help.htm
http://pgoh13.free.fr/english_malay_dictionary.php
http://dictionary.bhanot.net/index.html
http://www.dicts.info/dictionary.php?l1=English&l2=Malay

Stuff is Stuff

Now I will introduce one of the most basic concepts of language, saying that stuff is stuff. In Indonesian, there are no verb conjugations, and in this particular case, no verb at all. When directly translated, it sounds like baby talk.


Fo' example:

Ini kucing. - literally, "This cat", which means, "This is a cat".
Itu nasi. - "That rice", which means, "That is rice".

So as you can see, theres really nothing to it. I don't think that this takes much explanation. In some other languages, Spanish for example, you would need to learn the various irregular conjugations for the verb "to be". Ser, soy, son, es, not to mention that there are two "to be" verbs used. Even in English, am, are, is, which seems horribly complex compared to the Indonesian way of doing things. This is a reason why I think it is one of the easiest languages around. It simply doesn't deal with things that might bring any potential difficulty.

Note - There is a word that is sometimes used for "is", but it is not used often at all, and at this point I won't bother you with it.


This and That

The words 'ini' and 'itu' translate to 'this' and 'that' respectively. You can use them to say that "this is ___" or whatever you like, like in English as seen above. To say, "This cat", or anything where "this" or "that" is used to modify a noun, the usage is slightly different. In Indonesian, instead of saying "this cat", you say literally "cat this" and switch the word order.


Examples

Kucing ini - "cat this", meaning "this cat".
Orang itu - "person that", meaning "that person".

And that is all that there is to that. I don't think that needs to be elaborated any more.

Useful thing - There are no words equivalent to "the" or "a" in Indonesian. Just leave them out.

For people who care - There are actually some little prefixes and suffixes that are used sort of like "the" and "a". But not very often, and at this point, you don't need to worry about them. Just wait a bit.

~

Other Stuff

Since grammar is generally very simple, I think that the most important part of the language is learning vocabulary. Since so much less time can be spent on grammar, there is more time for vocab building! I feel kind of silly, writing such short grammar lessons, but that is really all that needs to be said! Its that simple. Anyway, after every lesson, I will try to give you 10 or so vocab words, and some exercises integrating the words with the grammar of the lesson, and the answers I will post in the following lesson.

-Vocabulary
Ini - this
Itu - that
Kucing - cat
Nasi - rice
Gambar - picture
Orang - person
Air - water
Pantai - beach
Teman - friend (Malaysian alternative, "Kawan")
Hadiah - gift

-Exercises, Translate!

Don't worry if the translations make little sense, the point is just to remeber the words and use the grammar, not say anything coherent or useful at this point.

1. Ini kucing. Kucing ini orang. Orang ini teman/kawan. Itu gambar. Ini nasi. Pantai ini air.

2. This is a friend. That is a beach. The beach is water. That cat is a present. The present is a cat. That picture is rice!

Exercises:

1. This is a cat. This cat is a person. This person is a friend. That is a picture. This is rice. This beach is water.

2. Ini teman. Itu pantai. Pantai air. Kucing itu hadiah. Hadiah kucing. Gambar itu nasi!


Good lessons, keep it up!

(although I'm one to speak xd )

I was just referring to my telling you to keep it up with these lessons... I'm one to speak, because I rarely update my Chinese lessons. sweatdrop

Exercises:

1. Mahasiswa senang.
2. Buku itu besar.
3. Guru ini SMART (you forgot to tell us how to say that!).
4. Kamus itu kecil.
5. Toko itu mahal.
6. Coffee is good.
7. This dog is a cat.
8. That happy person is a teacher.
9. That book is a dictionary.
10. That person is small.

Hey people who have been reading this. (Dave) Lately I have just been doing lessons in little bits at a time. Do you prefer that, or would you rather have bigger chunks?

Okay, I'll do stuff the same then. Its easier for me to write anyway.

~

Pronouns!

In Indonesian and Malay, similarly to Japanese, you are supposed to speak differently depending on who you are speaking to to show the proper amount of respect. Japanese is a very agglutinating language, so there end up being a lot of various conjugations and long annoying words that come up, but Indonesian is more on the analytic side of the spectrum, there are no complex formulas to put together. The majority of the required politeness is shown in the pronouns used.


- Here are the super pronouns. There is no change for case.

~
Saya - I
Anda, Saudara - You (anda most used)
Dia - He, She, It
Meréka - They (note the é)
Kami - We (exclusive)
Kita - We (inclusive)
~


Saya, Anda, and Saudara are the basic polite pronouns, similar to "watashi" and "anata" in Japanese, that you would use when talking to elders, respected people, people you don't know, all that. The other pronouns are more neutral when it comes to the politeness thing, its mostly shown in the first and second person. And because of that, there is a pretty big variety of possible pronouns that you can put into those slots, all with a slight difference in meaning.

Notice the é in meréka, which is pronounced as in 'egg'. Remember that the accent mark is not used in actual writing, so memorize when it is which kind of e sound.

'Kami' is the exclusive we, meaning that it only applies to you and the person or people you are talking to, excluding everyone else. Alternatively, 'kami' is the inclusive, and includes everyone. So say you are at some gathering, and you are talking to a friend. Then you would use kami. But if you were announcing something to everyone in the room, you would use kita.

Everything is completely gender neutral. Which is why 'dia' stand for 'he' and 'she'. The neutrality extends way more than you might expect, so much that the same word is used for mother and father or brother and sister.

Possession

This is easy. There are no words corresponding to 'my' or 'your', the way you show possession is that you put the pronoun after the thing that is being possessed, as if the pronoun were an adjective.

Nasi saya - my rice
Air dia - his/her/its water
Makanan kami - our (inc.) food
Mobil meréka - their car
Kucing anda - your cat

That is all there is to it. There is an even faster way to do this too, but I won't tell you right now. Maybe when we go more in depth into pronouns will I teach that. Anyhoo...

Sometimes, quite a lot of words can get stuck together this way. "nama makanan anjing guru teman saya" ,"My friend's teacher's dog's food's name". If you get confused, just go through the list backwards, and since it is the exact opposite of English, it should work out.

Pluralization

To pluralize any generic noun, just duplicate it. Can't get much simpler

Orang - person
Orang-orang - people
Mobil - car
Mobil-mobil - cars


Words!

Makan - eat
Makanan - food
Suka - (to) like
Mobil - car
Nama - name
Dan - and
Apel - apple
Belajar - study
Bahasa - language
Bahasa indonesia - Indonesian language
Bahasa melayu - malay language
Juga - too, also
Tetapi - but
Sekali - very (placed after adjective)
Tikus - mouse
Kéju - cheese
énak - delicious

Translate! Congratulations, you are now worthy of a coherent paragraph! I'll start introducing some conjunctions and stuff now too. I won't bother explaining them, since the use is pretty much the same as English.

Helo! Nama saya Bob dan saya orang. Saya suka berbicara dan belajar bahasa indonesia dan bahasa melayu. Nama anjing saya Tim. Nama anjing guru juga Tim. Anjing-anjing kita besar sekali. Tetapi, kucing saya kecil sekali. Dia suka makan tikus-tikus. Tikus-tikus suka makan keju. Saya juga suka makan keju. Keju enak sekali.

For some reason... I can not do un-aspirated 'p's or 't's. Any advice is appreciated. sweatdrop