Bali Expat Forum - Bali Travel Forum

[Kimbar]

May be a good site to help learn the local lingo..

http://www.byki.com/download/fpg/Indonesian.shtml

[FreoGirl]

Have you tried it out? Is it any good?

My personal experience living in Indonesia was that while it is very useful to be able to speak Bahasa Indonesia, to really get into life there I needed to learn the local language (i.e. the language everyone actually speaks on a day to day basis in the place you are living).

I wonder how that is for other expats? Is that your experience too? or do you get by with some Indonesian only?

[BaliLife]

freogirl..

i'm, as u know from perth... but my wife is indonesian.. we speak 50% english and 50% indo at home.. our kids are bilingual.. you could not be more right.. learning the colloquial is what lets you integrate and connect with people, whereas proper bahasa will just make u look like some dude who studied the language in their own country.. i can figure my way slowly through formal bahasa, (when i rarely have to read a newspaper, etc), but when i'm in surabay or bali, i only speak colloquial (in sby a lot of javanese, but i don't know the local bali dialect so it's just the regular colloquial there for me i'm afraid).. but what i love about the language is that even within colloquial dialects there are so meny levels of appropriateness depending on who ur speaking to..

ya wis, ya..

ct..

[matsaleh]

I tend to agree with you, FreoGirl. While most people do speak Indonesian, the Balinese tend to speak to each other in the local dialect.

From past experience, I've found that the easist way to absorb a language is to listen to locals speaking to each other and take note of pronunciation, inflection, sentence structure and the use of idioms, etc. Not so easy to do when bahasa Indonesia is not the preferred language!

In fact, over the past 6 months I think I've learned nearly as much basa Bali as I have bahasa Indonesia. The problem is, now I sometimes confuse the two.

[bolli]

May be a good site to help learn the local lingo..

http://www.byki.com/download/fpg/Indonesian.shtml

yes, got it from iBopp too.

[Tinkerbelle]

I would really like to learn either Indonesian or the Balinese language but not sure what is more used in Bail? Any help as to which one I should learn?. Do most of the Balinese know both languages. I might go and do a course in one of them not sure where though.

[FreoGirl]

Glad to see I'm not alone. I should point out that Balinese language is not a dialect of Bahasa Indonesia, but a separate language in itself. So would be the language spoken in Surabaya (perhaps a dialect of Javanese? or is it a whole language in itelf).

Sasak, which my husband and all his family speak, is quite a difficult language - and I've not seen it written. I've also heard several dialects of that language, my knowledge of it is mostly 'beach slang' spoken around Senggigi and Mangsit in Lombok. Sasak is also spoken in some parts of Bali around Padang Bai.

I'm with you Mats - after living in Lombok for a year, I learned as much Sasak as Indonesian - but I often don't remember which is which! except for those really hard Sasak words, they are unmistakable.

Tinkerbelle, I've never heard of Balinese language being taught in Perth - you can do Indonesian language courses at Central Tafe.

[BaliLife]

Unless you only want to be able to communicate with balinese, just learning balinese will limit u quite a bit.. But then again bahasa will make you sound like a person who's learnt the language from books alone.. A good trade-off is to learn colloquial indonesian.. It overlaps with bahasa and often with local dialects and EVERY indonesian speaks it.. There's 3 levels in indo that I'm aware of.. There's bahasa, then there's colloquial, then there's the language of the region, for example bahasa jawa, bahasa sunda, bahasa sasak, bahasa bali, etc.. I don't know much about other dialects (if that's what u choose to call the regional languages although there are credible arguements that these are not just dialects but rather languages of their own), but bahasa jawa has many levels within it.. I.e, a master would speak to their pembantu in the most kasar (the lowest respectful dialect), while the pembantu would speak to the master in the most respectful dialect.. I hate that but that's the culture I guess.. My wife who was born and raised in sby, but went to australia in grade 10 doesnlt even understand all of the javanese dialects.. Sometimes if her mom is blasting one of the servants, she doesn't understand because of the dialect.. But I suggest learning colloquial indo, not bahasa, and then tie that in with balinese or whatever regional language u wanna learn..

Ct

[Jimbo]

I agree with Balilife. I never learned FORMAL indonesian and I have travelled extensively around the whole of indonesia. For me Bahasa Pasar (Market language ) is the one most likely to get you by.

My wife speaks also Torajan but it is of limited use outside that community. IMO anyone staying in indonesia for any length of time should learn colloquial Indonesian as it is the lingua franca of Indonesia and is designed to have communication between all local dialects.

[Ipanema]

Ok my two cents worth. I am learning Bahasa Indonesian through a private tutor.

What I have been told, people learning it at TAFE etc can converse in writing or text messaging but often find it difficult when they have to actually speak, but our teacher tells us that is because we are adults and the way adults learn.

When I have used Bahasa Indonesian I have found everyone understands me as opposed to using English. When we do business in Tegalalang I have quite a few suppliers who do not speak English but understand Bahasa Indonesian and me speaking it eventually.

Our driver want us to learn Bahasa Balinese but it is too confusing trying to learn two languages, it's hard enough to learn one.

One day (hopefully) next year I hope to travel to other island and I think my best bet is learning Bahasa Indonesian.

Tina

[sooze]

I'm here in Bali at the moment and trying to pick up a few words. But will definitely learn the language once I return home. Will be invaluable for spending more and more time here.

And great to be back with all this wonderful weather. Have got rid of my winteritis from perth lol

[Kimbar]

I'm here in Bali at the moment and trying to pick up a few words. But will definitely learn the language once I return home. Will be invaluable for spending more and more time here.

And great to be back with all this wonderful weather. Have got rid of my winteritis from perth lol

Well at least i got the conversation going

[FreoGirl]

OK, well I guess when I refer to Bahasa Indonesia I'm referring to Pasar - i.e. the language that is taught in the schools, and is used by the news readers, shop assistants, what you use when speaking to someone from another island etc. So not the formal version of the language.

What I found though was that if I was sitting around with my family and people from my village, they would be speaking their language which almost bears no resemblance to Indonesian. If I wanted to talk with them, they would all understand Indonesian, and some would understand a bit of English (mostly "hawker" English). However, the conversation would need to switch to Indonesian, then once finished it would switch back to the language I didn't understand.

That leads me to a whole other question. In European culture, it is polite to use the language understood by all, so people will switch to whichever language they know everyone in the group understands. I didn't find that so much in Indonesia. Was that just my experience? or has anyone else found that too?

I even get that here in Australia when my husband and friends get together. They will converse in Indonesian, knowing that not everyone in the group understand Indonesian - to some that is considered a bit rude.

[BaliLife]

Freogirl, I think Jimbo was using pasar to refer to colloquial bahasa (not the newsreaders talk, they speak formal bahasa).. I haven't heard it called pasar, but it seems like from what jimbo said that's the name for colloquial.. Some examples of differences as I think of them:

Formal "I love you"
- saya cinta anda
Colloquial
- aku sayang kamu (but in jakarta aku might be replaced with gue and kamu with lu)

Others from formal to colloquial;
Tidak becomes ngak, in jawa toimor they use ndak
Untuk is buat, berbicara is ngomong, and many others, pretty much the majority of the words are different, but often they're based on the base word in formal bahasa, they drop the prefix and suffixes and use the middle component often (e.g. The mem).. Just my observations..

Tina, I studies formal indo (proper bahasa) briefly at curtin as an elective unit after I could already speak colloquial (I wanted to get easy ellective credits). It was vastly different and when I heard what they were teaching (I got moved into a more advanced class from the beginning coz I could speak colloquial) it did not resemble how people actually speak at all.. Sure if you talk to them or text msg them they'll understand, they'll know u r bule and have to write back in formal bahasa for u to understand, but the common lingo used in text messaging is usually even more abbreviated than the colloquial shortened language), e.g. Kalau becomes kalo, in colloquial u might ask someone, kamu mau pergi mana? In text it mau be mau ke mana?.. Again just my experiance, but honestly I thought teaching colloquial was an important missing component from the tertiary curriculums, I know they have to teach formal bahasa, but I think they should also at times say, ok now we're going to cover yesterday's lesson in colloquial and see how different it is.. If u want to learn colloquial, I don't know if ING (is that what it was called? the chat rooms) still run or whether they've been superceded by some other technology, but that was a place I used to go and you can see and initiate conversations with people in colloquial bahasa, coz they're all indos there chqatting..

Ct

[BaliLife]

Or was it I'm something??

[Ipanema]

Hi BaliLife

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.

My teacher has been teaching formal Indonesian for 24 years. She was teaching teachers how to teach it. She sat on many government committees when the government of the day realised the importance of a relationship with Indonesia.

Unfortunately that is not so anymore. She is teaching Asian students English now at University.

The difficulty goes both ways when I sms my partner I have to keep it simple as he has limited English and when he sms's in Bahasa he has to keep it simple so I can read it.

Very difficult to learn two languages and from my point of view totally different languages (in my head anyway). Apparently I use balineses slang as that is what I learnt in the 80's.

My teacher teaches us that they do drop there prefixes and from the base word, so as long as you can identify the base word half your battle to understand what is being said to accomplished.