Indonesian 30-Day Language Challenge: Day 1
For the month of December, I’ve decided to take part in a 30-Day Language Challenge! And the language I’ve selected to embarrass myself in on a daily basis is… Indonesian!
Indonesian isn’t even one of the languages I generally claim to actually speak (partly because I don’t really get to use it very often), but I think I’ve gotten it to a point where an exercise like this would be both feasible and beneficial for my language skills. (I briefly considering doing Hokkien for this challenge at first, but my Hokkien skills aren’t quite there yet.)
Anyway, here’s my first recording, followed by a translation of what I’m saying (or trying to say) in it, plus commentary.
Note: Apparently there are a number of “official” 30-Day Speaking Challenges whose existence I was unaware of until after I’d already recorded this first video. So starting from Day 2 I will be trying to follow the schedule of the Huggins International 30-Day Challenge, and I’ll also be submitting my recordings there as well.
(By the way, the full archive of my videos can be found here.)
Hi. What’s up? My name is Kevin and today is the first day of my Indonesian-language month.
Omniglot’s Indonesian phrasebook says “Hi” is legit Indonesian so I’m going with that.
For the duration of this month I will record a video in Indonesian every day in order to improve my Indonesian.
Apparently the word meperbaikkan which I used for “improve” was wrong, and it should be memperbaiki.
I saw this challenge… uhh… I have a friend who already did this challenge previously, and I saw his video and I thought I should also try this challenge to see… I’m not sure if this challenge will help me improve my… knowledge… of Indonesian, but I hope it will help a little… at least.
What a mess lol. I guess screwups during a live recording are inevitable.
The friend I mention here is Jared Gimbel, who just wrapped up a 30-Day Language Challenge of his own for November, for which he spoke Lao.
Also, here I start typing down notes on things that I should check later, for reference. (And of course my notes are full of typos. 😬) For example: I need to double check the many meanings of dulu (before, first, previously?), and look up how to say “knowledge” (pengetahuan, apparently) and “at least” (setidaknya, literally something like “the most not”, interestingly).
I also really need to talk slower since I think I screwed up the pronunciation of the word tantangan (challenge) twice here before getting it right the last time.
But I can’t promise… or… guarantee… that I will record a video every day because this month I actually have… “grand jury duty.” I don’t know what that is in Indonesian. But(?) I might be too busy to record a video every day, but I’ll try… or… “make an effort?” (I’m not sure about this word.)
I wasn’t sure about the words for “promise” (berjanji)and “make an effort” (berusaha) but it looks like I did actually get them right. On the other hand my attempt at inventing a word for “guarantee” on the fly was a disaster (it should be something like memberi garansi or menjamin, not menggarantasi).
But(?) I am recording a video now, and now… ok… I will talk a bit about the way I am learning Indonesian at the moment, uh, lately.
I don’t know why I keep saying “but” (tapi) in places where it doesn’t make sense. And I said “at that moment” instead of “at this moment” by mistake. Also, I think I put saya (“my”) in a grammatically incorrect position for the possessive construction.
I am currently using two (what is the count word?) books to study Indonesian, and Malay actually, both… (at the same time?).
The count word for buku is in fact buah, so I was correct about that. Buah is the default count word though (like 个 in Chinese) which is what made me uncertain. One valid way to say “at the same time” would be pada waktu yang sama.
The first book is this one— Учебник малайского языка — written in Russian, because I think books… for learning… foreign languages published in Russia are the best, better than books published in the United States, for example.
I forgot to translate the Russian book name while recording — it’s just “Textbook of the Malay (Malaysian) Language”. I wasn’t sure about terbit for “to be published” but it looks like that was correct (the transitive verb “to publish” is menerbitkan).
Side note: I really do think Russian language textbooks are (on average) much better than English ones. I’ve also used Russian books to study Hindi, Swahili, Afrikaans, and Slovak.
And the second book that I am currently using is this, a book called Bagus Sekali 3, and this one is for Indonesian and not for Malay. And this book is written in English, actually. For example… (shows iPad to camera) uhh… it’s not… visible in this video. Too bright.
Kelihatan is one word for “visible”, and I guess terlihat would also be fine. The word for “bright”, which I couldn’t remember, is terang.
The name of the second textbook, Bagus Sekali, just means “very good”.
Ok. Fine. And I’ve already spoken for five minutes and that’s enough for one day. I’ll record again tomorrow. Um…. good bye. (sighs, types “how do you say bye lol”) Bye? See ya? Not sure. Bye.
Wow, what a great way to end my first video — not knowing how to say “goodbye” in my target language.
To be fair, there’s a reason for my confusion — in Indonesian you can say either selamat tinggal (“stay well”) or selamat jalan (“go well”) depending on whether you’re leaving or staying. (Korean does something similar too.) But when you’re in a video on the internet, is anyone really leaving or staying? 🤔
I guess I could have also said sampai jumpa lagi (until we meet again) which is motion-neutral. I’ll try to watch some Indonesian YouTubers and see what they say to end their videos.
Well, I guess that went well enough for a first attempt, all things considered (my first two test recordings were total disasters though). I’ll have more recorded for tomorrow, though maybe a full transcription/write-up every day will turn out to be too much work. I guess we’ll see how things turn out. Sampai jumpa lagi!
