Indonesian--easiest language to learn?
There have been threads in the past about the easiest language to learn, with some people suggesting Esperanto for its regularity, or Italian for its pronunciation, or English overall, and so on. What about Indonesian? Some, like Barry Farber, say its the easiest major language to learn. The grammar is extremely straightforward and simple--like Chinese, but without the tones and characters. It has an easy pronunciation with a logical orthography. And unlike some of its Austronesian cousins, it--along with the similar Malay--has a huge population and literature.
Obviously, the vocabulary is another story, but that would be true for any language not from one's own language family. (The only languages that I can think of that might be easier are some of the creoles--western vocabulary base, reduced grammar--but localized and not much literature.)
Does anyone out there have experience with learning or using Indonesian or Malay?
I would expect Indonesia to have borrowed many Arabic words, since it is the most populous Muslim country. I did not know that Indonesian was still in use in the mianstream population of Indonesia. My guess would have been that Arabic was the official language.
Compare to Indoeuropeans or semitic languages, Indonesian is relatively easy to learn.
My expatriate friends told me that the only things that are relatively difficult to learn from Indonesian are its suffixes, prefixes, infixes and the combinations of them.
Indonesian, has been absorbing so many loan words from many languages, Including its cousins austronesian languages. Perhaps, more than 75 % of Indonesian words are loan words.
Even many Indonesians think that some Indonesian archipelago local languages are more difficult to learn than Indonesian.
I would like to learn Andonisina Language, because I want to visite the most populete muslime country in the world, i proud of the huge country.
As the native speaker I agree that Indonesian is a simple and easy learning language. The grammar is bery simple but bery organized. It has NO TENSES. To express the time we only use the time signals such ad now, tomorrow,etc. Indonesian has constant spelling, what you write is what you read. Dome or many words are borrowed from Arabic, Hindi, Sanskirt, and many others. But the spelling has been formed into Indonesian spelling, so that it will be easy to pronounce. I think the difficulties of learning Indonesian is about using and combining prefixes, suffixes and some infixes. However, it is the reason why Indonesian is easy. You only learn a words and you can use it for many functions. You can make many verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Indonesian is flexible. We (the Indonesians) in daily conversation, do not use the formal Indonesian. We sometimes don't think about grammar. We often also, use informal or simplified words, 4 example:tidak (not) becomes gak or nggak or tak in daily conversations. Indonesian words can easily used in SMS because we can make many abbreviations from it (of course all or some people understand the long form, example: (long) Saya tidak mau makan nasi goreng (I don't want to eat fried rice) to (short) Sy tdk mau mkn nasi grg (the same meaning). It's very easy &fun to learn Indonesian, try it!!!!!
My brother is currently learning Indonesian, and he concurs that it is relatively easy to learn. (He plays in Gamelan Sekar Jaya, which has won the "best gamelan outside of Bali" award.)
Indonesian uses a good alphabet thanks to the efficient Dutch who once colonised the place.
I hate to contradict all of you, but you are misguided. I am a professor of linguistics and Southeast Asian Languages at the University of Michigan (Flint). Indonesian (and Malaysian) are very difficult to learn and perfect due to the wmsp-sweep grammar rule.
I admit that Malaysian and "formal/standard" indonesian is easy to learn. However, Indonesian daily conversation language(spoken Indonesian) is different from the standard. Indonesian can read standard correct Indonesian in books and newspaper, or listen to it when watching the news on television, but few native Indonesian speakers use formally correct language in their daily conversations. While this is a phenomenon common to most languages in the world (for example, spoken English does not always correspond to written standards), the degree of "correctness" of spoken Indonesian (in terms of grammar and vocabulary) by comparison to its standard form is noticeably low. That's why i found that most of my malay friends or those who just learn Indonesian can't understand indonesian conversation.
However, learning Indonesian is still very easy if you compare it to other language. The reason is just like "EvanC" said before!
i am very curios about chinese and indonesian and i dont think the grammer is very easy as someone said here, chinese grammer is very dificult and indonesian takes more time to learn, any indonesian speaking is here?
Indonesian is easy to learn, but if you want to understand daily speaking or newspapers you need to learn a lot of "informal expressions" and a large number of abreviations.
Ups..don't forget to learn cultural things.
Hello!! If you want to improve your Indonesian (of course if you learn it), I can help you for translating from English to Indonesian. Send your reply to "Translate to Indonesian" forum or you can add your text here! I will like it! I'm native 100%!!!!!!Thx!
I disagree with someone who said Arab is Indonesian Language. Absolutly not! We only use Arab in the quran and prayer! Actually most moslems only can read Arabic words, only some people (esp. the ustadz) who know the meaning. Remember! We only borrow the words and meaning. So, it doesnt mean the national language is Arab! And actually, Im christian, so I cant do both of read and translate Arab to Indo. I asked bout this to a muslim many times ago! Thx!