Bahasa Indonesia. Crash course #2.2020

The next one was Indonesian. I like this language, and it has a reputation of an easy language. Is it so?

I remember visiting an “Introduction to Indonesian” a few years ago on the Polyglot Gathering, but it is obvious that I have forgotten everything since then. So, now it is a great time to refresh the knowledge.

Indonesia is spoken by 42 million people. It has borrowed many words from the other languages, but there are also many words that we use, which came from Indonesian, for example: bamboo, gong, orangutan, etc. there are no genders, declinations, tenses, but there are different prefixex, suffixes and indexes to replace them.

Interesting #1

There are 4 ways to say “not”: before verbs and adjectives, before nouns, in imperative, and in the meaning as “not yet”. This would be respectively: tidak, bukan, jangan, belum.

Interesting #2

The word orangutan consists of two words: oran – “forest” and hutan – “person”. So, literally, it means a forest person.

interesting #3

The mata-hari comes also from Indonesian, where mata means “sun” and hari – “day. Togather, we have “a sunny day”.

What can I say?

Halo. Apa Kabar?

Aku tidak bekerja kantor. Aku harus bekerja di rumah.

Aku belajar bahasa hari setiap.

Terima kasih! Selemat tinggal!

I think, I might not learn Indonesian for now as well. However, when I will want to score more languages, I will definitely come back to it 🙂