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Rubrica di Lisa Budiharjo

Facts about Indonesian Language

May 15, 2020

Hi, I am Lisa, tutor for Indonesian language.
I'll share some facts about Indonesian that maybe you never know. But, before i tell you the facts, i'll give you a little informations about Indonesia.

Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of more than 17.000 islands, including Sumatera, Java, Borneo (Kalimantan), Sulawesi and New Guinea (Papua). Indonesia is the world's largest island country and the 14th largest country by land area, at 1,904,569 square kilometres (735,358 square miles). (source: wikipedia)

I know some of you maybe already know that Bali is one of the island in Indonesia. It is one of the famous tourist attractions in the world. Besides in Bali, actually there are many tourist attractions in Indonesia which are famous for their underwater beauty and beautiful coastline. Other famous tourist attractions are Raja Ampat in Papua, Derawan Beach in Kalimantan, Bunaken Islands in Sulawesi, Komodo and Padar Island, etc.

Beautiful right? Yasss!! So after the corona ends, come to Indonesia.

Okay, i'll start to share the facts about Indonesian language.

1. Wikipedia Indonesian ranks third in Asia after Japanese and Mandarin. This is due to the large number of contributors from Indonesia and varied articles. While in the World, Wikipedia Indonesia is ranked 26th out of 250 countries in the World. There are 143,108 new WordPress users from Indonesia and there are 117,601,633 visits through 40 cities in Indonesia.

2. Indonesian has six vowels, namely: a, e, i, o, u, and e pepet ("eē"), and three diphthongs (ai, au, oi). The consonants consist of: p, b, t, d, k, g, v, j, h, ng, ny, m, n, s, w, l, and y. Besides that, there are also other consonants that only appear in the word loan, i.e. f, v, sy, z, and kh. The Indonesian spelling itself is almost the same as Italian. For example, "t" sounds more advanced than English (sounds roughly between the letters "t" and "th") and has a little vowel similarity.

3. The basic wording in the Indonesian language is Subject - Predicate - Object - Information (SPOK). Unlike English, the verb is not influenced by the numbers of subjects and objects. Indonesian also does not use time, usually 'time' is stated by adding adverbs such as "yesterday" or "tomorrow" or other references such as "already" or "not yet".
The example of sentences is: Ayahku makan roti di dapur (My father is eating bread in the kitchen). "Ayahku" (Father) is Subject, "makan" (is eating) is Predicate, "roti" (bread) is object, and "di dapur" (in the kitchen) is additional information. So you can give an additional information such as: time or place. And the verb doesn't change if you wanna say other subject, like anak-anak (the kids) or saya (I am). The word become: "Anak-anak makan roti di dapur" or "Saya makan roti di dapur". Easy right??

4. In September 2015, Indonesian was set to be the official language of ASEAN. Of course that is an advantage and pride in itself. At the ASEAN level, Indonesian language users reach almost 60% and have been widely studied in the interests of the ASEAN economic community (AEC).

5. In many countries, Indonesian is considered important, you know, to learn. For example, in Vietnam, the United States, Canada, Ukraine and Australia. In fact, South Korea also considers it important to study Indonesian, such as Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), which has an Indonesian-Malay language department.



6. In Japan, there are special associations that examine Indonesia, including Indonesian. The association named Nihon Indonesia Gakkai (Association of Indonesian Researchers All over Japan) turned out to have existed since 1969, you know. Wow, it's been a long time. In addition, several universities in Japan also have Indonesian language majors, such as Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) and Osaka University.

7. Indonesian in Australia is also highly appreciated. Many universities in Australia have Indonesian language majors. Around 500 schools there also open Indonesian language classes. Many Australians are fluent in Indonesian, even young Australians who are fluent and love Indonesia have founded the Australia-Indonesia Youth Association (AIYA).

So those are some facts about Indonesian. Hopefully from this article, many Cafetalk users will be interested to learn Indonesian.

Thank you for reading this article. Stay safe and healthy!
Cheers, Lisa.

This column was published by the author in their personal capacity.
The opinions expressed in this column are the author's own and do not reflect the view of Cafetalk.

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