r/indonesian • u/Substantial_Cash3769 • 23d ago

How to start learning Indonesian?

I am interested in Indonesian culture and want to travel to the country one day. How can I start learning Indonesian from scratch? I mean, like grammar, nouns, verbs or other basic elements of this language. I have watched some videos on YouTube but they only teach some daily dialogs, which is not so useful for me to understand how it works and learn by myself. Is there any free website or not so expensive textbook that I can get?

7 Upvotes

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5

u/Antoine-Antoinette 23d ago

The Duolingo course is not great but it’s okay and it’s immediately accessible to you.

You can start now, just pick up your phone - go to the bookstore later.

Duo doesn’t teach the grammar explicitly but if you already know what a noun, verb and adjective are. And a few other grammar basics - that’s enough.

4

u/vendetta1881 23d ago

i would recommend you to buy some books if you want to start from scratch. Some list of books :

  • Bahasa Indonesia: Book One (Yohanni Johns and Robyn Stokes).

  • Indonesian: A comprehensive grammar (Michael C. Ewing).

  • Basic Indonesian : An Introductory Coursebook ( Stuart O. Robson).

One thing to remember is affixes uses. You can mince the words structure and mess with grammars , yet people can still understand you and its normalized in Indonesia. But one thing you can’t mess up is affixes, as it completely change the meaning of the sentence

1

u/DragonVivant 12d ago

I have heard of this online text book called “The Indonesian Way”, is it any good?

2

u/Worwul 23d ago

Just gotta start!

Best to understand the sentence structure first to understand how/why they talk. After that, its mainly just vocab and learning sentences you need most.

1

u/FitDescription5223 23d ago

which indonesian? slang or what is spoken really different from standard

1

u/srhpril 23d ago

Get an Indonesian friend and start chatting, it's how I learned English after all. My dms is open if you want pointers & occasional convo with beginner Indonesian !

1

u/stradn_ 23d ago

Have an Indonesian neighbor, maybe?

1

u/sugampars Native Speaker 23d ago

Try checking the materials here: https://bipa.kemdikbud.go.id/belajar_cat.php?cat=MQ%3D%3D#cat1

In the same website, I think they also provide more learning resources

So Bahasa Indonesia for foreigners usually called Bahasa Indonesia untuk Penutur Asing (BIPA), you can try looking for more materials using the search term BIPA

1

u/Witty_Clairence98 23d ago

Hello! I suggest to start with conversational lessons on Hilokal/Hello Talk language app. There's also Ling app with a monkey logo on it, they specialize in all Southeast Asian languages. I discovered them on Instagram recently. Hope this helps!

1

u/UpsetPorridge 20d ago

Get a teacher!! try Preply

1

u/SummerCoffe 23d ago

easiest i can explain ?

make the word in your language, pick the subject + topic, nothing else needed.

=>"I am hungry now."

=> "I hungry now."

=> (Subject) I = saya, (Topic) Hungry = lapar, (Additional Info {not really necessary}) Now = sekarang

=> Saya lapar sekarang.

100% people here will understand what you mean.

1

u/IntelligentSource754 23d ago

The US peace corps have free PDFs that are handy. Just Google around for them