Saya suka Indomie: Learning Indonesian. Also working on French & German.

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Deinonysus
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian.

Postby Deinonysus » Wed Sep 05, 2018 8:04 pm

Adrianslont wrote:Hey, don’t worry about using ibu and bapak - it’s been extremely common everywhere I’ve gone, actually more commonly it’s bu and pak. I can’t remember anyone ever saying anda to me although you hear it in interviews on tv and radio and where the announcer is addressing the audience. Everyone called me pak and i called them pak unless they were a young person. In places like five star hotels - I can actually afford them in Yogyakarta and Medan - they called me bapak.

I wonder what Axon’s experience was as a younger man. I imagine he got a mix of pak and mas. Axon?

Ah, got it. I'll stick to answering as prompted then.

I have the feeling that it will take me a while before I understand Indonesian pronouns.
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian.

Postby Axon » Thu Sep 06, 2018 1:14 am

Adrianslont wrote:I wonder what Axon’s experience was as a younger man. I imagine he got a mix of pak and mas. Axon?


Yeah, I don't think I was ever called Anda, almost always mas. I'm young enough that most people defaulted to mas, only pak if they were feeling particularly formal AND were close to my age.

Plenty of people knew me by sight as a local student, and if they knew my name they'd say Mas Alex. Just as frequently, they'd drop pronouns all together - "Mau apa lagi" instead of "Apakah Anda mau apapun lagi?"
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian.

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Sep 06, 2018 11:47 am

Axon wrote:
Adrianslont wrote:I wonder what Axon’s experience was as a younger man. I imagine he got a mix of pak and mas. Axon?


Yeah, I don't think I was ever called Anda, almost always mas. I'm young enough that most people defaulted to mas, only pak if they were feeling particularly formal AND were close to my age.

Plenty of people knew me by sight as a local student, and if they knew my name they'd say Mas Alex. Just as frequently, they'd drop pronouns all together - "Mau apa lagi" instead of "Apakah Anda mau apapun lagi?"

Very interesting! This is helping a lot, thank you!

I found a couple of articles that clarified things a bit for me:
In Indonesian, the very widespread use of kinship terms as second person pronouns seems to function both to “incorporate” the addressee into an imagined community or “family”, and to make clear the differences in status that are perceived to exist between addresser and addressee. Here are some of the most common words for “you” that are also kinship terms.

Bapak Ibu
father mother

Adik Saudara
younger brother/sister brother/sister

Oom Tante
uncle aunt

and many more.
https://www.bahasakita.com/bapak-and-ibu/

Since Indonesian was part of Indosphere of Greater India, Indonesian royal and noble titles are based on the ancient Hindu Indian honorifics.

Historically Southeast Asia was under the influence of Ancient India, where numerous Indianized principalities and empires flourished for several centuries in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam. The influence of Indian culture into these areas was given the term indianization.[1] French archaeologist, George Coedes, defined it as the expansion of an organized culture that was framed upon Indian originations of royalty, Hinduism and Buddhism and the Sanskrit dialect.[2] This can be seen in the Indianization of Southeast Asia, spread of Hinduism and Buddhism. Indian diaspora, both ancient (PIO) and current (NRI), played an ongoing key role as professionals, traders, priests and warriors.[3][4][5][5] Indian honorifics also influenced the Malay, Thai, Filipino and Indonesian honorifics.[6]

In Indonesia, ranks and professional titles are used. It is also customary to use Pak, Bapak or Saudara to address men and Bu, Saudari or Ibu to address women. Pak and Bapak are literally translated as "father". Bapak is more formal and is used much like the English word, "sir". Saudara (for men) or Saudari (for women) is another term of greater respect and formality. It translates to "kinsman", "lady" or "gentleman". Ibu is literally translated as "mother". It is used as "ma'am" or "lady" would be in English. If addressing a man whose name is unknown, one uses Bapak and if addressing a woman whose name is unknown, one uses Ibu.

An informal way to address a significantly older person is to use Om, Paman, Bibi or Tante, which mean "uncle" and "aunt". The terms are Dutch-influenced and quite commonly used in the big cities.

Local honorifics continue to be employed throughout Indonesia. In a casual situation, Kakak is used to address a person as an older sister or brother. In Javanese Mbak is used for "older sister" and Mas is used for "older brother".

In Sumatran Malay or Minangkabau cultural spheres, an older brother is addressed as Abang. However, it is also common to address a becak driver, angkot driver, vegetable vendor, fishmonger or hawker with Abang.

"Gus" (from bagus) is used exclusively to address an honorable Eastern Javanese person with a strong traditional and religious identity. For example, the Indonesian former president, Abdurrahman Wahid is often addressed as Gus Dur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia ... Honorifics

Were you in a Javanese speaking area? From Wikipedia it looks like "mas" and "mbak" are Javanese. And also, does the Wiki article seem accurate to you? The second paragraph seems well sourced but the rest may be original research and anyone can edit these things.

And is it common to drop pronouns if they're understood from context? I know it's common in Japanese.
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian.

Postby Adrianslont » Thu Sep 06, 2018 2:55 pm

All of that seems about right with the exception that saudara/i is super rare in my experience - I’ve only really seen it in old text books. Heard it once on the radio to refer to a relative in the third person - that got my attention. Several Indonesians from different islands have told me that no one uses that these days.

Also, adik gets shortened to dik and kakak gets shortened to kak.

All of this may seem like a lot to learn but it’s not so hard and you get used to it.
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian. Also studying German

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Sep 06, 2018 7:31 pm

Terima kasih, Adrianslont!

I just had my first day of German class! I was so nervous about getting there on time that I walked in on the beginner class and sat there for the last 10-15 minutes! We didn't go over much German in the first lesson. It looks like they got through chapter 5 of the book last year (out of 12 chapters), and he'll review a bit before moving on. I'll try to skim through what I missed and put any unfamiliar vocabulary into an Anki deck.

I had a bit of a hard time understanding the professor at first because of his American accent, and it didn't help that he spoke quietly and I was sitting right next to a window unit air conditioner. But I'm sure I'll get used to his accent soon (I'm an American too after all), and next class I'll sit on the other side of the room.

I watched a bunch of France 24 news this morning, but also remembered to watch a couple short videos in German from DW for good measure.

I'm quickly getting the feeling that Clozemaster is much more useful for intermediate learners than beginner learners, so I've dropped Indonesian and started in on the 501-1000 most common German words. I haven't run into any new words yet, but I am seeing new uses for words I already knew, such as the use of Ernst (serious) as a noun (I forget the exact context).

I'm expecting a slight dip in motivation for Indonesian as I get excited about German, but I still want to keep going with it until I finish off Pimsleur and Duolingo. In a few weeks the honeymoon period with German should wear off and things will even out.
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian. Also studying German

Postby MattNeilsen » Thu Sep 06, 2018 8:52 pm

Deinonysus wrote:Terima kasih, Adrianslont!
I'm quickly getting the feeling that Clozemaster is much more useful for intermediate learners than beginner learners, so I've dropped Indonesian and started in on the 501-1000 most common German words.


It could also depend on the language. I've been getting a lot of value out of the 1-100 Most Common Words in Hebrew, and I'm a complete beginner in the language. In my experience, there's been very little vocabulary in terms of nouns - it's pretty much all prepositions, adverbs, verbs, etc. I'm almost done with the first section, and as a result, I feel like I have a decent grasp of basic grammar now.

Another idea would be to go through 10 or 20 sentences and look up every word you don't know. There are a lot of words that repeat in the 1-100 sentences, so that would probably be enough to start getting the gist of things. I found it helpful to start with Multiple Choice for the first ~100 sentences, after which I moved to exclusively using Text Input.
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian. Also studying German

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Sep 07, 2018 12:35 am

MattNeilsen wrote:
Deinonysus wrote:Terima kasih, Adrianslont!
I'm quickly getting the feeling that Clozemaster is much more useful for intermediate learners than beginner learners, so I've dropped Indonesian and started in on the 501-1000 most common German words.


It could also depend on the language. I've been getting a lot of value out of the 1-100 Most Common Words in Hebrew, and I'm a complete beginner in the language. In my experience, there's been very little vocabulary in terms of nouns - it's pretty much all prepositions, adverbs, verbs, etc. I'm almost done with the first section, and as a result, I feel like I have a decent grasp of basic grammar now.

Another idea would be to go through 10 or 20 sentences and look up every word you don't know. There are a lot of words that repeat in the 1-100 sentences, so that would probably be enough to start getting the gist of things. I found it helpful to start with Multiple Choice for the first ~100 sentences, after which I moved to exclusively using Text Input.

You know... I went to do one last review of Indonesian, and I realized that I learned a lot of really valuable vocabulary that I wasn't getting anywhere else. It's only 9,273 sentences for the entire course which is fewer sentences than most sections of German, let alone the entire thing. So I'm back on with Indonesian and I'll see how much I can get in the next two months or so.
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian. Also studying German

Postby MattNeilsen » Fri Sep 07, 2018 1:05 am

Deinonysus wrote:You know... I went to do one last review of Indonesian, and I realized that I learned a lot of really valuable vocabulary that I wasn't getting anywhere else. It's only 9,273 sentences for the entire course which is fewer sentences than most sections of German, let alone the entire thing. So I'm back on with Indonesian and I'll see how much I can get in the next two months or so.


That's what I'm here for - Clozemaster enablement :)

I didn't realize how few sentences there were for Indonesian. On the bright side, it'll feel like you're getting stuff done really fast! I should feel more grateful - Hebrew only has ~7-9 million speakers, but there are 97,279 sentences in Clozemaster.

I opened the Spanish course last night - cause I just couldn't resist looking at the shiny object - and was excited to see how robust it was. I didn't know how pernicious wanderlust could be until I started following this forum...
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian. Also studying German

Postby Deinonysus » Mon Sep 10, 2018 3:23 pm

Indonesian
I got hit with some heavy Wanderlust temptation, but luckily I was able to avoid it, or at least divert it. My wife and I have been eating a lot of Indian food lately, and that got me very interested in Hindi specifically and also Brahmic alphabets in general. I was able to redirect this into interest in Javanese, which also uses a Brahmic script (although the Latin alphabet is more common). Javanese is the Indonesian language with the most native speakers (far more than Bahasa Indonesia), and I'm sure that it has heavily influenced the language. Like Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese is an Austronesian language.

Unfortunately, the Javanese script looks almost nothing like most other Brahmic scripts. It seems to have diverged early. But even if it won't help me much learning other Brahmic scripts in the future, it still looks cool. 8-)

Here is a very cool video I found on YouTube comparing English, Indonesian, and Javanese:


I was able to recognize some vocabulary in Javanese, but as far as I can tell it is not mutually intelligible. This video uses the Latin alphabet instead of Javanese script, which I think is the norm these days. Javanese contains retroflex consonants, which are very common around the Indian subcontinent but are not used in Bahasa Indonesia.

I started learning the Javanese alphabet on memrise, and it shouldn't be too much of a time sink. Beyond trying to learn the script, I'm not planning on spending any time actually studying the language. Indonesian and German are keeping me busy enough and I don't have the bandwidth for a third language.

Omniglot seems to have a very comprehensive article on the writing systems used for Javanese:
http://omniglot.com/writing/javanese.htm

Javanese has three different registers (used at different levels of formality), and I have heard that these are like three completely separate languages, although most people don't use the highest register.

German

In terms of German, I've done most of my homework that's due tomorrow, and since I missed the first four chapters of the book, I'm putting all unfamiliar vocabulary into an Anki deck. I'm also including nouns that I am already familiar with but don't remember the gender of. I'm taking the stance that if I don't know the gender and the plural, I don't know the word at all.
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Re: Damn you Duo! Side quest: Indonesian. Also studying German

Postby Axon » Tue Sep 11, 2018 5:48 am

Deinonysus wrote:I was able to redirect this into interest in Javanese...


Good stuff! That's an excellent video, if a little slow-moving. I wish I'd found it when I was in Indonesia.

My second semester of Indonesian courses included an hour a week of Javanese, taught in Indonesian like all my other classes. Most young people that I met (university students) could speak fluent Javanese but I rarely heard it on campus or even on the streets. Only enthusiasts knew how to read and write the script and my professor said that the ornamental Javanese script on street signs often contained mistakes.

You'd think an hour a week wouldn't be enough to learn anything, but I actually did pick up the basics pretty well by the end of the course. Good choice not combining it with Indonesian at this point, though. The grammar is almost the same and that really messed with me when I tried to construct my own sentences.

I was in Yogyakarta, commonly called the cradle of Javanese culture. When I visited Surabaya (in East Java) I heard significantly more Javanese around me than I did in Yogya. There's a bule (white foreigner) who moved to Surabaya whe he was young and speaks outstanding Javanese - and I actually ran into him in a mall and got a selfie!
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