Jajang Jahroni | Researcher and Writer, PhD candidate in Boston University.

Dalam tradisi kebahasaan kita, kita sering mengubah vokal sebuah kata untuk mendapatkan lawannya. Sana-sini, bolak-balik, wara-wiri, larak-lirik, pontang-panting. Vokal a dan i begitu kentara, memberi makna “ke sana ke sini.”

Jajang Jahroni | Researcher and Writer, PhD candidate in Boston University.

Kita banyak memiliki kosa-kata yang ternyata mampu untuk tampil ringkas dan padat. Kita belum memfungsikan kaidah-kaidah bahasa yang tidur, kalangan fungsionalis belum mengusahakan kosa kata bahasa Indonesia dapat dipergunakan secara luas untuk menerjemahkan kata-kata asing.

Dr. Timothy Hassall – Lecturer in Indonesian, Australian National University, Canberra.
Indonesians use terima kasih and makasih only sparingly. One Indonesian explains: Indonesians … do not express their thanks in every occasion explicitly. Indonesians’ expression of thanks only appear if they explicitly ask other people to help them. This will be clear in a situation like borrowing books in the library or buying goods from the market or getting off the bus. Indonesians feel that they do not need to say ‘thank you’ to librarians or merchants or bus drivers because it is their duty to serve the customer.

Dr. Timothy Hassall Lecturer in Indonesian, Australian National University, Canberra. 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 information. You have to pick your words carefully for this. With the right verbal toolbox it can be simpler than you [...]

Dr. Timothy Hassall Lecturer in Indonesian, Australian National University, Canberra 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 is that English is shaping the bones of the language as well. This is not a new thing for Indonesian. [...]