Indonesian has thousands of words that resemble English words. Lots of them serve an obvious purpose: they fill a gap in the vocabulary. Examples of these are…
Posts published by “Dr. Timothy Hassall”
Tim Hassall has a PhD in Applied Linguistics, an MA in TESOL, and a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education. He coordinates and teaches courses on Indonesian language and aspects of Indonesian linguistics at the Australian National University, Canberra. His main research interests are the acquisition of second language pragmatics and the influence of English on Indonesian. He has published a number of articles in refereed journals and book chapters.
If words are flesh and grammar is bones, then the flesh of Indonesian has an unmistakable English flavour by now. What you might not know…
Indonesian is the sole national and official language of Indonesia. However, there are more than 300 languages in the archipelago. For most Indonesian the language…
Whether you’re living in Indonesia or just on holiday there, some of your most useful phrases will be formulas to ask for things – goods, services and…
On my first trip to Indonesia twenty years ago, I arrived in the village of Ubud in Bali and was sitting in my losmen. Two…
With many verbs there is a neat contrast between suffix -i and -kan. Typically, with an “-i” verb: the Undergoer stays where it is, while…
One version of the Indonesian passive sentence often taught to students at school and university, at least in Australia, is this: The ‘di-‘ passive is…