Easy words:
1. jus = juice
2. restauran = restaurant
3. doktor = doctor
4. taksi = taxi
5. kalculator = calculator
6. tomat = tomato
7. organisasi = organization
8. institusi = institution
9. konsep = concept
10. tenis = tennis
1. jus = juice
2. restauran = restaurant
3. doktor = doctor
4. taksi = taxi
5. kalculator = calculator
6. tomat = tomato
7. organisasi = organization
8. institusi = institution
9. konsep = concept
10. tenis = tennis
(That was hardly worth typing.)
Intermediate words:
1. tur = tour
2. es. es krim = ice cream
3. teh = tea
4. saus = sauce
5. konser = concert
6. stasiun = station
7. bir = beer
8. mal = mall
9. konteks = context
10. apel = apple
Advanced words:
1. pir = pear
2. sains/saintis = science/scientist
3. botol = bottle
4. coklat = chocolate
5. fesyen = fashion
6. buku = book
7. porsi = portion
8. kopi = coffee
9. apotek = apothecary/pharmacy
10. alpukat = avocado
My Indonesian is continuing to improve. This week, I was inordinately proud of myself for politely asking an employee at the mall "Maaf, di mana toiletnya?" (Excuse me, where's the restroom?). Even if I can't speak very well, I'm picking up more words out of dialogue I hear, and I can understand more of the subtitles on TV. And lucky me, the Indonesian language is very welcoming to its students. It doesn't really have verb tenses. You can royally screw up syntax and still be understood. Words don't have gender. Spelling is light-years easier than in English. But what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for with added syllables and dictionary difficulty. To look up a word in the dictionary, you have to make sure that you know the root word (not as easy as it sounds), and with prefixes and suffixes, a fairly short word in English like "ignore" turns into a tongue-twisting monster in Indonesian: "mengesampingkan." But there are also little delights like "kaus" (T-shirt) + "kaki" (foot) = sock (kaus kaki).
And thanks to Wikipedia, I've learned some of the words that Indonesian has given to English: junk, amok, bamboo, gecko, gingham, cockatoo, papaya, and orangutan. You can see others at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Indonesian_origin.
Am I having too much linguistic fun? Probably. Am I going to stop? Absolutely not.
1 comment:
I have one thing to say: word.
:D
P.S. I miss you.
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