Colloquial Jakartan Indonesian


Book Description

This book aims to describe aspects of the Indonesian language as spoken by educated Jakartans in everyday interactions. This style of language is in many ways significantly different from the formal language of government and education, to the extent that it deserves separate consideration. While formal Indonesian has been the subject of a considerable amount of description very little attention has been paid to informal styles of the language. The variety described here, Colloquial Jakartan Indonesian, is the prestige variety of colloquial Indonesian and is becoming the standard informal style. The description and texts in following chapters are drawn from recordings of natural speech of educated people living in Jakarta . While the book aims to inform those with a background in linguistics the needs of teachers and learners with little or no knowledge of linguistics is always borne in mind. The work thus does not consider theoretical linguistic issues nor use technical terms which would not be readily understood by most readers.




Indonesian Slang


Book Description

Cekidot, gan!--"Check it out, Boss!" Kamu Dodol--"You're a coconut fudge!" (You're slow on the uptake) This book is an informal compendium of Indonesian expressions, including proverbs, slang, quotations and acronyms. The unique aspects of the Indonesian language offer one of the best windows into Indonesian culture. Slang, titles, proverbs, nicknames, acronyms, quotations and other expressions reveal its character, in the words of its people and are a great way to learn Indonesian culture. This book of expressions looks at Indonesia with the help of its national language, bahasa Indonesia. It describes Indonesians and their fears, beliefs, history and politics, as well as how they live, fight, grieve and laugh. Indonesian is a variant of Malay, the national language of Malaysia, and many of its expressions come from the Malay heartland of Sumatra island. Indonesian has also incorporated terms from Javanese, the language of the dominant ethnic group in a huge nation of more than 17,000 islands. Although Indonesian is officially a young language, it contains words from Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese and English, a legacy of the merchants, warriors, laborers and holy men who traveled to the archipelago over the centuries. The Indonesian language was a nationalist symbol during the campaign against Dutch rule in the 20th century. Indonesians who fought against colonialism made it the national language in their constitution when they declared independence in 1945. Two generations later, modern Indonesians loveword play. The tongue slips and skids, chopping words, piling on syllables and flipping them. Indonesians turn phrases into acronyms and construct double meanings. Their inventions reflect social trends, mock authority, or get the point across in a hurry. This book divides Indonesian expressions into categories such as food and wisdom, politics and personalities. The format is the same in each chapter. An expression in Indonesian, or sometimes a regional language in Indonesia, is followed by a translation, an interpretation of the meaning, and usually a summary of the idiom's origin or background. Some translations are more literal than others, reflecting an effort to balance clarity of meaning with the flavor of the original words.




Indonesian Idioms and Expressions


Book Description

Indonesian Idioms and Expressions is a collection of Indonesian expressions, including proverbs, slang, quotations and acronyms, that offers a commentary on their origins, as well as insights into Indonesian culture, customs, and history. The book is an informal compendium designed to be both educational and easy to read. There are four parts in the book, and the chapters hit on various linguistic themes, among them wisdom, characters, animals, food, slang, family affairs, and politics. Entries include the expression in Bahasa Indonesia, a translation, an equivalent expression in English, and an explanation if necessary. The idea is to learn about Indonesian through the texture and content of its language, rather than the headlines—often bad ones—that tend to dominate perceptions of the vast country.




Parts of Speech


Book Description

Parts of Speech are a central aspect of linguistic theory and analysis. Though a long-established tradition in Western linguistics and philosophy has assumed the validity of Parts of Speech in the study of language, there are still many questions left unanswered. For example, should Parts of Speech be treated as descriptive tools or are they to be considered universal constructs? Is it possible to come up with cross-linguistically valid formal categories, or are categories of language structure ultimately language-specific? Should they be defined semantically, syntactically, or otherwise? Do non-Indo-European languages reveal novel aspects of categorical assignment? This volume attempts to answer these and other fundamental questions for linguistic theory and its methodology by offering a range of contributions that spans diverse theoretical persuasions and contributes to our understanding of Parts of Speech with analyses of new data sets. These articles were originally published in "Studies in Language" 32:3 (2008).







Colloquial Indonesian


Book Description

Colloquial Indonesian: The Complete Course for Beginners has been carefully developed by an experienced teacher to provide a step-by-step course to Indonesian as it is written and spoken today. Combining a clear, practical and accessible style with a methodical and thorough treatment of the language, it equips learners with the essential skills needed to communicate confidently and effectively in Indonesian in a broad range of situations. No prior knowledge of the language is required. Colloquial Indonesian is exceptional; each unit presents a wealth of grammatical points that are reinforced with a wide range of exercises for regular practice. Key features include: A clear, user-friendly format designed to help learners progressively build up their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills Jargon-free, succinct and clearly structured explanations of grammar An extensive range of focused and dynamic supportive exercises Realistic and entertaining dialogues covering a broad variety of narrative situations Helpful cultural points explaining the customs and features of life in Indonesian An overview of the sounds of Indonesian Balanced, comprehensive and rewarding, Colloquial Indonesian is an indispensable resource both for independent learners and students taking courses in Indonesian.. Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.




Usage-based and Typological Approaches to Linguistic Units


Book Description

The chapters in this volume focus on how we might understand the concept of ‘unit’ in human languages. It is an analytical notion that has been widely adopted by linguists of various theoretical and applied orientations but has recently been critically examined by both typologically oriented and interactional linguistics. This volume contributes to and extends this discussion by examining the nature of units in actual usage in a range of genetically and typologically unrelated languages, English, Finnish, Indonesian, Japanese, and Mandarin, engaging with fundamental theoretical issues. The chapters show that categories originally created for the description of Indo-European languages have limited usefulness if our goal is to understand the nature of human language in general. The authors thus question the status of traditionally accepted linguistic units, especially their static understanding as a priori entities, and suggest instead that an emergent and interactional view of both structure and function offers a better fit with the data from the languages examined. Originally published as special issue 43:2 (2019) of Studies in Language.




Indonesian: A Comprehensive Grammar


Book Description

This grammar is a complete reference guide to the language of Indonesia as used by native speakers. The book is organised to promote a thorough understanding of Indonesian grammar. It presents the complexities of Indonesian in a concise and readable form. An extensive index, cross-referencing and a generous use of headings will provide readers with immediate access to the information they require. Key features: to aid clarity, all word groups and structures discussed are illustrated by natural examples of frequently used words and expressions each section can be read independently, enabling the reader to focus on a specific aspect of the language, if required all major structures of Indonesian, from words to complex sentences are described in detail common grammatical terms used are all clearly defined in an extensive glossary. By providing a comprehensive description of Indonesian in a clear and non-technical manner, this grammar makes an ideal reference source for all users of the language, whether in colleges, universities or adult education classes of all types. James Neil Sneddon was Associate Professor in the Faculty of Asian and International Studies at Griffith University, with long experience teaching Indonesian language and linguistics. He is also author of Understanding Indonesian Grammar. Alexander Adelaar is Principal Fellow in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. He is author of a number of books on Austronesian linguistics. Dwi Noverini Djenar lectures in the Department of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney. She is author of Semantic, Pragmatic and Discourse Perspectives of Preposition Use: A study of Indonesian locatives. Michael C Ewing is a senior lecturer in Indonesian Studies at the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. He is author of Grammar and Inference in Conversation: Identifying clause structure in spoken Javanese.




Jakarta Malay


Book Description




Searching for Structure


Book Description

This book argues against the existence of complementation in colloquial Indonesian, and discusses the ramifications of these findings for a discourse-functional understanding of grammatical categories and linguistic structure. Based on a close analysis of a corpus of spontaneous conversational Indonesian data, the author examines four construction types which express what is often encoded by complements in other languages: juxtaposed clauses, material introduced by the discourse marker bahwa, serial verbs, and epistemic expressions with the suffix -nya. These four construction types offer no evidence to support complementation as a viable grammatical category in colloquial spoken Indonesian. Rather, they are best understood as emergent, discourse-level phenomena, arising from the interactive and communicative goals of language users. The lack of evidence for complementation in colloquial Indonesian reaffirms the need to understand linguistic structure as language-particular and diverse, and emphasizes the centrality of studying linguistic categories based on their actual occurrence in natural discourse.