Myths and Facts of Indonesia

    1.     Indonesia is an Islamic Republic.

MYTH

Although Indonesia has the most Muslim population in the world, but the government system is not fully based on syariah or the Islamic law. It means it’s not an Islamic country. It’s a democratic republic. Nevertheless, the ideology and social norms in Indonesia are influenced by Islamic tradition. For example, although there’s no written rule to obligate women to wear hijab (except Province of Nangroe Aceh Darussalam), but a lot Muslimahs (Muslim women) in Indonesia wear it.

 see more

    2.     Poverty in Indonesia is caused by the lack of natural resources.

MYTH

Indonesia is richly endowed with natural resources. The main cause of poverty in Indonesia is the lack of quality human resources.

    3.     Indonesia is the world’s 4^th most populous country.

FACT

Indonesia has over 238 million people.

  

   4.     The Indonesia’s economy is the world's 17^th largest economy by nominal GDP.

FACT

  

   5.     Indonesian is the mother tongue of most Indonesian people.

MYTH

In fact, 90 % of Indonesian people use 742 distinct indigenous languages, instead of Indonesian in everyday life. Nevertheless almost all Indonesian people understand Indonesian.

   6.     Bali is the only tourism object in Indonesia

MYTH

In fact, there are many choices of tourism objects in Indonesia. If you prefer to enjoy maritime beauty of Indonesia you can visit Bali, Raja Ampat in Province of West Papua, Manado, and many more. If you want feel a different side of Indonesia, you can try to enjoy jungle nuance to see orangutan in Kalimantan or Borneo Island. You can also visit Komodo Island in East Nusa Tenggara to see Komodo Dragon – which is been stated as one of NEW SEVEN NATURAL WONDERS - before your eyes.  But, if you’re bored with all those natural wonders, try the cultural aspects of Indonesia. There are 300 distinct native ethnicities in Indonesia. It means you can feel 300 different cultural wonders, such as the culinary, architectures, traditional music, traditional dance, handicraft, and so on.

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns in Indonesian have slightly differences to its counterpart in English. But, don’t worry, because the differences are not so tricky. Here are the personal pronouns in Indonesian:

     A.      Sort by English Pronouns

    B.      Sort by Order of Speakers

See, it’s not so hard to memorize those pronouns. There are several alternatives for “I”, which are: aku and gue/gua. But, never ever try to use gue/gua  to strangers or people who are older than you, because gue is considered as rude. 

Verbs

Like no other languages (that I know), In Indonesian, you don’t need to figure out how to change a verb into certain tenses. Because in Indonesian, there’s no such thing as tense. So, it can be said that verbs in Indonesian are ALMOST unchangeable, at least by tense. “almost” doesn’t mean “fully”. So, one thing that could change a verb is whether a sentence is a passive or active. But, at this time, we don’t discuss it yet.

Just like English verb, the meaning of Indonesian verb can change due to affix that modifies a verb. Commonly, an Indonesian verb needs affix to make them a “real” or meaningful word. For example, infinitive form of “belajar” (study(-ies)/studied/studying) is “ajar” (to study). But “ajar” can’t be used in common Indonesian sentence. So “ajar” can’t stand alone. But, some verbs don’t need any affix. For example, the infinitive form of “duduk” (sit(s)/sat/sitting) is also “duduk”(to sit). But, if you try to add affix, you’ll change the meaning. For example, men+duduk+i = “menduduki”, means occupy or sit on something. But, those conditions above are valid in formal form or written Indonesian. In fact, some verbs can both stand alone or not in informal form or speaking Indonesian. But, for now, try to learn only the formal side. Ok ?!

If you want to find an Indonesian verb in dictionary you have to know what’s the dictionary form or the infinitive form (kata dasar) of the verb. At this time we’ll try to memorize several Indonesian basic verbs. Here are:

note that the verbs which can't stand alone (No) actually can stand alone in spoken Indonesian, but it's gramatically incorrect.

The Basic Pattern of Simple Sentence

Just like English, to make an intelligible sentence in Indonesian needs at least two components, that is :
Verbal sentence: S + V
Nominal sentence: S + Adj

After that, we can add some “spices” to make it even more intelligible and communicative, such as object, complement, adverb, etc. So, it’s simple to learn Indonesian. Just like no other languages,  Indonesian language is very simple and easy to learn, especially for those who speak English, Spanish, Deutsch, and other language that using Latin alphabet.

Facts of Indonesian Language

-      Indonesian people call Indonesian Language as Bahasa Indonesia.

- Indonesian language - combined with other Malay Language Family -  is the 7th largest language with approximately 259 million speakers.

- If you've mastered Indonesian language, it's a lot easier to understand other Malay language family, such as Melayu (Malaysian language) and Bruneian language.

- In 2007, Indonesian became the 2nd official language in Vietnam.

- Indonesian is the 26th largest language from 250 languages in Wikipedia.org.

- Indonesian  is the 3rd largest language that is used in wordpress blog posts.

- The speakers of Indonesian can be found in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore,  the Netherlands, Suriname, East Timor, the Philippines, Australia, Saudi Arabia, New Caledonia, and the United States

- VOA chooses Bahasa Indonesia as one of the broadcasting language among other 51 languages.

- BBC preferences on Indonesian as one of its World Service 27 languages instead of Malay, despite United Kingdom colonial ties with Malaysia.
See : source

- Indonesian uses Latin script as the official alphabet.

- Indonesian used to be written in Malay-Arabic script (Jawi Script).