Bali Expat Forum - Bali Travel Forum

[Ilu]

Freo Girl, I have the same problem as you. before I meet my husband I was learning Bahasa Indonesia from my friend and usualy everybodey speak Bahasa becuse my friends was mostley muslims. Now I have a Hindu husband and his family and friensds never speaks Indonesian. Only when I ask or someone speaks derektly to me they use Indonesian. I try to learn Balinese now, but I mix the two languages and my husbands family and most of the village is Brahmana so they use diferent language to talk to different people. So now I have almost given up bouth languages.

[Jimbo]

Ahh. The joys of married life to an Indonesian

[FreoGirl]

Ahh. The joys of married life to an Indonesian

And it IS a joy. I wouldn't change it for anything. Life is always interesting!

[tintin]

If one learns proper bahasa Indonesia, the rest is easy, including bahasa Bali, which has many words in common or derived from the bahasa Indonesia. Bahasa Indonesia will help you immensely in reading an Indonesian newspaper (which can be a lingo in itself).

One of the best method to learn bahasa Indonesia is the Cornell University series of lectures, authored by John Wolff et al. He also have available many "practical" bahasa, including colloquial Indonesian , from Java mainly.

[DCC]

I would think the fact that one took the time to learn the language at all is respectful and appreciated. Being from the States, I can not remember thinking less of a foreigner based on their command of the English language, it was always 'tell me more about' wherever they where from - 'welcome to the States' - and 'are all the girls in Kazakhstan as cute as you?'

[BaliLife]

when i first started learning indo from mywife's family, i was intrigued by the similarity between words with what at the time seemed to sound the same...

e.g. ngantuk, ngentut, ngentot - (some of these are coloqial) - the first meaning sleepy, the second to pass wind and the third something that my wife's family did not teach me.. a not so nice word..

then there was juga, suka, cuka.. ok well suka doesn't sound like the other 2 but juga and cuga are like... so what if there was a book named juga suka cuka (also like vinegar).. and one dude says to another, "aku baru membaca 'juga suka cuka', kamu sudah membaca itu? Aku senang buku itu" and the other dud replies, "Iya, aku sudah membaca buku itu, aku juga suka 'juga suka cuka'!"... hehehe... ok it's lame i know, but it is so lame within our household that we always chuckle about it...

But there was another incident on my first trip to indo back in 2000, before i was married to my wife... this is pretty bad, but funny in hindsight... ok, so in javanese burung is manuk.. like someone else pointed out earlier, when u r first learning the language, often u don't know what is bahasa and what is local dialect... so, in java they all love fried chick (ayam goreng), and that night i had been taken to a famous place in surabaya called "Ayam Goreng Pemuda"... now this was my first exposure to ayam kampung, and i was not impressed... coincadently, my father in law had at the time, in a cage as pets some small birds, slightly bigger than budgies... so when we got home, my wife's cousin's had arrived... they asked me, "enak ayam gorengnya?", I replied, "ngak enak, terlalu kecil, manuknya om lebih besar dari pada ayam itu"... (literally meaning, 'not nice, uncles birds are bigger than that chicken)..this got a big "huhhhhh?"... it was only a split second after i said it that i realised what had been said.. just like burung is sometimes used to describe male genitalia, well manuk is almost exclusively used for that in javanese when u talk slang.. and it's much more kasar than the use of burung, which might translate to 'twinkle'... the use of 'manuk' would translate to 'c**k'... so there i was, a big, overweight bule, who at the time was trying to make a good impression on the then skeptical parents of my girlfriend, and i had in front of 10 people or so said, that my girlfriend's father's c**k was bigger than the chicken i'd just eaten... ouch.. but here we are 7yrs later, still married and still laughing about it..

language is a fun thing..

ct

[Jimbo]

Nice one. Made me chuckle too

[matsaleh]

Yes I have had a text with colloquial term in it I think it was 'muah' and my teacher did not know what it meant.

Hi Tina,

"Muah" means "kiss" in English or "cium" in bahasa Indonesia. Sometimes also sent as "mu...ah". If you say it slowly, it does resemble the sound of a kiss, don't you think?

[FreoGirl]

haha. Reminds me of the time I got konsol and kosong mixed up

[matsaleh]

There's an interesting article in "Asia Media" (article originally from Jakarta Post, August 4) regarding the increasing use of "bahasa gaul" in everyday language throughout Indonesia.

Sadly, I think it's inevitable - as it is in most countries - that informal language becomes the "norm". It does seem to be the case in most western countries, so I can't imagine that Indonesia will escape this eventuality.

http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-s ... ntid=77239

[BaliLife]

hi matsaleh,

i dunno that it constitutes a bad thing. that informal language is based on the local languages and dialects of the indo people and has much more cultural relevance than formal bahasa, which was only introduced from malaysia (though i understand it being necessary) to create a standard amongst the many different groups of people..

just my thoughts..

ct

[matsaleh]

I think you're right about the cultural relevance Balilife, but I also think that although all languages are constantly changing and growing, it's important for Indonesia to retain some conformity, precisely because there are so many local dialects.

I'd hazard to say that within 10 years, many older-generation Indonesians will have difficulty understanding the language used in the mass media.