Diary of an Escaped Expatriate: LANGUAGE EDITION
Diary of an Escaped Expat, Part
This series is about my 15.5 year adventure in Indonesia - from teaching and public speaking to marriage and parenting to neighbors and partners to culture and religion to cuisine and art, and more! I'll give an honest, sometimes touching and even shocking look at what it was like to live there for all of you. I hope you'll enjoy it and support my effort to put it all into writing! If you don't mind, resteem it, please!
TRAVELLER'S EDITION ON LANGUAGE!
I started learning bits and pieces of Indonesian very early on. When I'd walk out of my complex, a security guard would say "Jalan-jalan?" I soon realized that meant "walking". If I came back with bags of groceries, one would ask "Belanja?", and I realized that meant "shopping". After I started teaching English, my acquisition of the language speeded up because students were helping me as I helped them. I learned letters and numbers, and then I started learning simple words and expressions useful in everyday life.
Nol (0), satu (1), dua (2), tiga (3), empat (4), lima (5), enam (6), tujuh (7), delapan (8), sembilan (9), sepuluh (10), sebelas (11), dua belas (12), tiga belas (13)...dua puluh (20), tiga puluh (30)...seratus (100), dua ratus (200)...seribu (1,000), dua ribu (2,000)...sejuta (1,000,000), dua juta (2,000,000), etc.
The Indonesian language was created by the Dutch, and contains several languages. During Soeharto's dictatorship, Chinese was entirely suppressed to the point that most Chinese Indonesians cannot use it - I guess this was his way of forcing the Chinese to more fully integrate, but it was only partially successful. In the early 70s, Indonesia revised it - making some improvements, such as to spelling. "CH" changed from "tj" to "c", "J" changed from "dj" to "j", "Y" changed from "j" to "y", "U/OO" changed from "oe" to "u", and other changes. This helped to improve its phonetic quality, making it an easy language to read and spell, although some Westerners have a problem with the "ng" sound (think "ring"). Since that time, however, education and usage has been making it less clear in some ways (such as similar words becoming used as the same, such as "butuh" & "perlu" (need & require), "ingin" and "mau" (desire and want), not to mention the ubiquitous "bisa", which can mean venomous/poisonous ("berbisa"), can/able to, may/allowed to, and more. A recent version of education, called Kurikulum 2013, or KurTiLas, which is the 2013 curriculum, holds great promise for Indonesia, if they can ever fully socialize it, train all the teachers, and implement it. It will rocket Indonesia past many other nations if the politicians stop fooling around.
It was pretty funny, sometimes. One day, in class, I wanted to tease my students, who were young adults. I knew a few words of Indonesian, but I didn't know grammar. I wanted to say "I'm a crazy Caucasian," so I said: "Saya gila bule!" Everyone laughed, and someone explained that I'd actually said "I'm crazy about Caucasians!" So, I immediately switched it around on them and said "Kalian gila bule," which means "You're crazy about Caucasians," which elicited more laughter. :)
I tried using the Shinchan Crayon comic books to learn Indonesian but because the pictures are so miminalist, I often had to ask Ita about the meaning.
The Alphabet in Indonesian.
A: short "a" sound H: ha! O: as with English V: fay
B: bay I: English "e" P: pay W: way
C: chay/say J: jay Q: key X: eks
D: day K: kah R: Err (roll the r) Y: yay
E: long "a" sound L: as with English S: as with English Z: zed
F: as with English M: as with English T: Tay
G: gay N: as with English U: "OO" like "food"
Indonesian is heavily informed by cultural priorities. In most parts of Indonesia, especially amongst the Javanese and Sundanese, diplomacy, politeness, harmony, networking, and the maintenance of relationships are high in priority. They aren't always polite in the way you'd expect, though, so you can accidentally be rude when you think you're not - that happened to me often! Indonesians don't really want you to be blunt and really honest if it'll go against those principles I just listed, although no rule is true of all Indonesians, or even all people from one culture!
Pronouns are defined by politeness rather than function. Whereas English has pronouns with the functions of subject, object, possessive adjective, possessive and reflexive, Indonesian does not. Some pronouns - the colloquial ones - can be concatenated with other words (e.g. makanananku = my food, where "ku" means "my"). Each pronoun fulfills all of those functions, although to make a pronoun reflexive you add "diri sendiri" (e.g. dirimu sendiri = yourself, singular, where "mu" is singular "you"). Here they are, from most to least polite.
I, me, my, mine: Hamba, saya, daku, aku, -ku...gue is Betawian, not Indonesian
Myself: diri Hamba/saya sendiri, diriku (or daku, aku) sendiri
You, your, yours (singular): Engkau, Anda, kamu, kau, -mu...loe is Betawian, not Indonesian
Yourself (singular): diri Engkau/Anda sendiri, dirimu (or kamu) sendiri
He, his, him, she, her, hers, it, its: Beliau, dia, ia, -nya
Himself, herself, itself: Diri Beliau/dia/ia sendiri, dirinya sendiri
We, us, our, ours (excluding listeners/readers): kami
Ourselves (excluding listeners/readers): diri kami sendiri
We, us, our, ours (including listeners/readers): kita
Ourselves (including listeners/readers): diri kita sendiri
You, your, yours (plural): kalian
Yourselves: Diri kalian sendiri
As you can see from the pronouns, politeness is very important, thus the lack of differentiation between "he", "she" and "it", but "we" is. Also, there is no capitalization to emphasis the egoic "I"; instead, it is to increase politeness with the most polite pronouns, but it is acceptable to use them without capitalization under normal circumstances.
You'll sometimes hear "diri sendiri", but this is not a pronoun.
Indonesian also uses a lot of prefixes and suffixes, and the former makes it hard to use the majority of translation dictionaries because most are not alphabetical. This is because in translation dictionaries that eliminate prefixes you need to know the root word to find the translation. Thus, it is important to find one arranged alphabetically with prefixes. The only one I'm aware of has "Tru-alpha" printed on the cover.
After about 2 years of casual efforts to learn Indonesian, including constantly being with my wife, I was able to have basic conversations. By 5-6 years, I could have intermediate conversations and, pushed by life events, I was able to have advanced conversations and give serious speeches by around 8-9 years there. Again, this was all without any serious effort to learn - no classes or special books. I never achieved mastery of the language, however, in writing or speaking. There are a lot of idioms and expressions that I never learned about, my vocabulary was somewhat limited, and my grammar was peppered with errors. While I could interpret between two people, I couldn't keep up with non-stop speeches or complex sentences.
As with many other languages, Indonesian has regional variations. For example, if you go to NTT or Sumatra, the word for piquant "pedas" is pronounced "pay-dahs" but on Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok, for example, it is "peh-dahs" or, especially amongst the Javanese, "peh-dehs" because Javanese has almost the same word: "pedes". The Javanese, being dominant, often assume their version of Indonesian is the most correct, both in spelling and pronunciation, but there isn't even uniformity amongst them, the dominant culture, because their own language is not consistent from area to area, either.
Vocabulary also varies because of the influence of local languages. In Javanese, you'll say "Mas" when talking to a younger man in order to show respect, but "Bapak" for an older man, or one in a position of power. If you go to NTT, they have no idea what "Mas" means (because it's Javanese) and are more likely to use "Tuan", which is also Indonesian for mister, although it tends to be used more often for foreigners.
Mr.: Tuan, Bapak
Miss: Nyonya
Mrs/Ms.: Nona, Ibu
Indonesia has literally hundreds of languages, religions and cultures, and there is a strong link between culture, religion and language in many places. Supplanting the local language with Indonesian can have a deteriorating impact on a local culture and religion.
One thing that some Indonesians don't like to accept or admit is ancestral connections to the Chinese, Indians and certain other groups, while connections to royalty, Middle Easterners (except Jews), the Dutch and other Caucasians are a source of status and pride. Nevertheless, the influence of other other countries is evident in the history, culture, languages, art, clothes and food. Loanwords from several languages exist and I once saw an excellent Indonesian movie that took a historical look at prostitution through their eyes, and that was created with over 5 languages, including Javanese, Betawian, English, Indonesian and Dutch.
Colloquial Indonesian is easy to pick up, lacking the range and complexity of proper Indonesian, although it's contaminated with local flavor.
Slang, on the other hand, is harder to learn because its vocabulary is constantly changing and highly variant depending on location, and access to TV and Internet.
Loanwords from Dutch (piring, kamar), English (komputer, Internet), Japanese (sushi, ramen), and other languages pepper Indonesian, although the largest part of the vocabulary is from Melayu, Javanese, Sundanese, Minangkabau and Sanskrit (via Javanese). Despite former President Soeharto's repression of Chinese language, religion and culture, Mandarin and Hokkien also influence Indonesian. In recent years, the move towards globalization has caused a push to normalize English. This goes back and forth, with one politician pushing against and reducing its role in schools, and the next increasing it.
"Ambulance" written on a free ambulance, instead of the Indonesian word: "Ambulans," shows the rise of English in Indonesia.
Indonesian would be a better choice for an international language than English, if for no other reason than that it is phonetic, with each letter of the alphabet, except "e", producing one sound and diphthongs being virtually absent. However, that's not the only reason and, if you explore it, you'll understand what I mean. If you learn this language, you'll be able to understand Malaysian fairly well, and vice versus, despite differences.
You may be wondering why I don't post a lot of pictures from my time there. Well, in my early years there, I had a hard drive crash that caused the loss of some of my photos, although I had many backed up to DVDs. Then, in 2015, my backup HDD was stolen, which contained the majority of my photos and, finally, I had to hastily leave Indonesia, resulting in the loss of all my printed photos as well as the old DVD backups from the early years. Thus, aside from what can be found online, I lost a huge number of photos. :(
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