Bahasa Indonesia
So I’m at Gajah Mada University, Yogyakarta, for the final event in Opera’s Indonesian tour.
The national language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia (bahasa means “language” — in Thai the same word is “Pasa”). Zi Bin says it’s very similar to Bahasa Malaysian, so he’s been impressing the local ladies with his ability to woo quadralingually).
It reminds me very much of Turkish (my third language) because they’re both spelled phonetically, with the letter “c” pronounced as English “j”, and “ay” is pronounced “I/ eye”, but mostly because of the number of English words they borrowed: taksi, polisi, republik, informasi, politeknik, teknoloji, kharisma spring immediately to mind from Bahasa. (This borrowing isn’t all one sided; English borrowed “rambutan” and “Orang-Utan” from Bahasa Indonesia.)
Most Bahasa words remain mysterious yet mellifluous to me. My current favourite is the fun-to-say “dilarang” which rather prosaically means “forbidden”, such as “dilarang merokok” (no smoking) or “dilarang masuk” (no entry).
This homegrown word can be combined to pleasant effect with borrowed words. In a residential neighbourhood I saw the sigh “dilarang klakson” which means, of course, “Don’t sound your horn”- combining English/ Bahasa linguistic miscegenation with naïve optimism, given Indonesian drivers’ love affair with the “klakson”
hey, you pronounce ‘nasi goreng’ very well.
And thank you for great speech.
November 22nd, 2008 at 5:59 am
haha.. saya suka gaya bahasa anda..
terima kasih buat informasinya, hal sangat baru buat saya..
November 22nd, 2008 at 6:46 am
You did deliver a very good speech. I like it!
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:30 am
Good speech
November 22nd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I like your style in speaking.
but.. someday.. I want to show you about my best web design.
thanx
November 22nd, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Mr. Bruce thank you very much for visiting ITS, you did a very good speech about HTML 5 and CSS 3. I also do some web designing and developing and some of those portfolios had been published at my blog. If you mind please have a look.
Oh yeah, if you’re interested in learning our language it’s preety easy trust me..
Thank You
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:37 am
Hi Bruce!!
Thanx for visiting Jogja!! I’m sorry if I was a bad driver for u guys.
So if next year you going to visit Indonesia again, especially Jogja, just let us know about it.. And maybe you can take your family with you also, they’re gorgeous..
There still a lot of Jogjas city corner that we haven’t yet show to you.
Oh..I almost forgot to thank you for shared about your story and experience, it;s inspiring!
See you Bruce…Hope someday I can go to Birmingham also
November 24th, 2008 at 12:13 am