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

[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