Introduction
This module is for students who know formal standard Indonesian fairly well but do not yet know colloquial Indonesian. It aims to equip them with a good enough reading knowledge to enjoy a range of colloquial texts.
It focuses solely on Jakartan Indonesian: the most prominent and widely understood variety of colloquial Indonesian.
Although this module only teaches you to read colloquial Indonesian, that gives you access to a huge new world of print media, including countless thousands of blogs, Facebook pages, on-line discussion forums, and also, increasingly, popular literature.
Being able to read colloquial Indonesian is also a great step towards learning the spoken form. While written colloquial texts are naturally somewhat different from spoken ones, they also share a great many features. And all the colloquial features taught in this module (except spelling) are features of spoken colloquial Indonesian as well.
Basic features
This first section will introduce you to some bare essentials. It shows you:
- some common colloquial words
- colloquial shortenings of some words you know already
- colloquial changes to the sound of many words, and with it to their spelling
- colloquial dropping of prefixes on some verbs
Read “Presentation through Example Sentences”. This is in three sections. Use the guide to colloquial items below each sentence to work out what all the words mean.
All colloquial features in the examples chapter are marked in bold.
Click here for example (1) , (2), (3).
Sound changes (with changes to the spelling too)
• “a” in the last syllable of many words is replaced by unstressed “e”, i.e. by the schwa sound (e.g. temen = “tM’N” instead of teman)
• “ai” diphthong is replaced by “é ” in many words (e.g. pake “paké” instead of pakai)
• “au” diphthong is replaced by “o” in many words (e.g. kalo instead of kalau)
• “s” sound is dropped at the start of certain words (e.g. aja for saja; uda for sudah)
• “h” sound in some words is dropped at the start of the word or start of a syllable (e.g. abis for habis; liat for lihat)
•“h” sound is dropped at the end of some words (e.g. lebi for lebih)
Note: certain words often take more than one of those sound changes. Then they can look very unlike their formal counterpart, e.g. uda for sudah; item for hitam; ijo for hijau
Grammar changes
• “ber-” prefix can be dropped from many verbs (e.g. bicara for berbicara)
• “meN-” prefix can be dropped from any transitive verb, or at least any reasonably common one (e.g. bawa for membawa)
• “ke-” replaces “ter-“ prefix in many verbs; mostly ones where “ter-” expresses accidental meaning (e.g. kebawa for terbawa)
• “ini/ nih” and “itu/ tuh” can come before the head word. (e.g. nih orang instead of orang nih)
For a summary of all basic features presented in those sentences, you can click here.
