Nama saya Mez! ...and that's all I've got

[deird1]

I've been trying to learn Indonesian. It's really, really hard.

I wasn't expecting this. Indonesian's supposed to be comparatively easy - but out of all the languages I've learnt, this is by far the trickiest. Why, you ask? It's the vocab.


The thing is, I'm used to European languages (Sindarin and Auslan being the only non-European languages I've ever really paid attention to). In which...
Apple is Apfel.
Mother is mater.
Intelligent is intelligent.
Bed is Bett.

Even the words that aren't that simple tend to be understandable - like, in Latin, "fur", "ebrius", and "canes" become really easy to remember once you link them to "furtive", "inebriated", and "canine".

Indonesian, on the other hand, while having some of the simplest grammar I've ever encountered, has a vocabulary like nothing I've experienced before. I can understand the concepts - but I can't remember a single sentence.


Apparently I'm really good at weird grammars, as long as I recognise the words...

Comments

[immer_am_lesen]

Ah! Siapa nama anda? Nama Saya...

I remember a few sentences like that. And words for animals. And can count to 100, and sing some songs.

w00t for primary school language classes!

[mercredigirl]

Juga "tinggal di mana?" dan "apa khabar? khabar baik!" dan "umur saya 15 tahun" dan "selamat hari lahir!" ... Then I run out of words. :P *dim memories*

Haha, the vocabulary will start to become familiar, don't worry! :) And the very phonetic nature of the words is comforting!

[immer_am_lesen]

Oh gosh yes- Apa kabar? Kabar baik!...and all the boys would say 'kabar bicycle!' instead.... :-p
Selamat Hari Natal dan Tahun Baruuuuuu!

[deird1]

Heh.

All my primary school language lessons were German. Which, until I hit high school, meant I could say my name, count to ten, and play "Wie spät ist es, Herr Wolf?"

[norwie2010.livejournal.com]

Once i met a woman from Tokyo in New York. Being curious, i asked her what's it like to speak Japanese and English, and she said that these two languages are so very different from each other as if one wasn't a language at all, like the difference between driving a car and cooking.

Since i only know European languages myself, i cannot add anything from myself.

(norwie2010 from LJ)

[doughtier]

Hah! I can understand her. I personally find it very difficult to learn languages from the same family group, because I keep getting confused by the comparisons. I find Japanese a lot easier than, say, Arabic or Ancient Greek, because Japanese is nothing like my other languages. /$.02

|Meduza|

[ruuger]

Heh, and some languages can also be very deceptive if you look at them from a germanic perspective - like, say, Finnish where apple is 'omena' and orange is 'appelsiini' ;)

(ask me how many times I've had to explain to foreign friends why the "apple juice" carton has pictures of oranges in it)

But this is actually why I've found studying non-germanic/romance languages more easy because I don't any any prior assumptions to misguide and confuse me.

[deird1]

That's like German - with constant confusion among English speakers about why they keep calling the ham "chicken"...

[lonespark]

Huh. I never thought about that, since my language learning went English, Thai, Spanish, Mandarin (not really learned, but I did get two semesters worth of it and would pick it back up relatively easily, I think), and now I'm shooting for eventual Kreyol...I tend to think of languages as "tonal vs. not," though when I think about it further all the ones I've learned have a certain grammatical simplicity...

Latin freaks me out, but I also never had any reason to study it. Old Norse is tantalizing, from the whole "better understand your sacred texts" thing...apparently I am addicted to ellipses...Dineh also seemed like a cool challenge, but one that would be actually useful...until I moved.

[deird1]

Latin freaks me out, but I also never had any reason to study it.

For me, the whole reason is basically "IT'S LATIN. HOW COULD I NOT?", and a strange obsessiveness with weird things. :)

[pthalo]

Hungarian also has very few cognates with English. Aside from words that English got from Hungarian, like paprika, and words like internet and pizza and email, there's almost nothing recognisable. I found that making up little stories can help, you just have to make up longer stories. For example *hunts down an indonesian word (this is hard since i don't know how any of this is pronounced* -- tembang -> them bang -> bunch of toddlers trying to make a song.) silly story, nothing to do with real origin of the word, but silly enough that you might remember it easier. :)

You also may find these lists helpful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Indonesian_origin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_loan_words_in_Indonesian