It is admirable, I suppose, that more and more Indonesians, especially in the service industry, are learning to speak some English. At the same time, it is unfortunate, given their accents and their choice of phraseology, that they still cannot be understood.
Of course, that is partly my own fault, because 1) I'm kind of stupid, 2) I will often enough have trouble comprehending speech in any language (thanks, MS!), and 3) I begin by expecting Indonesian and therefore try to interpret what I'm hearing as Indonesian, when in fact it is English (more or less).
One major problem that we English speakers encounter in communicating in Indonesian is a native phraseology that is unlike the forms we are accustomed to in English. Or, as my wife used to tell me, 'That's not the way we say it'. One attempts to directly convert English to Indonesian, naturally enough, but it just doesn't work that way. By the same token, the same dynamic would seem to be work when an Indonesian speaker attempts to express a thought, coming from his or her Indonesian head, directly to English. What comes out is at best unusual and at worst gibberish.
For one thing, everything is backward in Indonesian (or, for the Indonesian, backward in English). 'The black dog,' for instance, is 'dog black'. 'Where are you going?' is 'Want to where?' 'My handsome husband' is 'Husband handsome my'. Therefore, one is looking not only for the plain words in the language but for the order of words proper in that language.
In the end, though sometimes frustrating, this sort of thing keeps life interesting and challenging, for me anyway. It seems amazing, and somehow delightful, that something as basic and essential as language should remain so elusive.
Of course, that is partly my own fault, because 1) I'm kind of stupid, 2) I will often enough have trouble comprehending speech in any language (thanks, MS!), and 3) I begin by expecting Indonesian and therefore try to interpret what I'm hearing as Indonesian, when in fact it is English (more or less).
One major problem that we English speakers encounter in communicating in Indonesian is a native phraseology that is unlike the forms we are accustomed to in English. Or, as my wife used to tell me, 'That's not the way we say it'. One attempts to directly convert English to Indonesian, naturally enough, but it just doesn't work that way. By the same token, the same dynamic would seem to be work when an Indonesian speaker attempts to express a thought, coming from his or her Indonesian head, directly to English. What comes out is at best unusual and at worst gibberish.
For one thing, everything is backward in Indonesian (or, for the Indonesian, backward in English). 'The black dog,' for instance, is 'dog black'. 'Where are you going?' is 'Want to where?' 'My handsome husband' is 'Husband handsome my'. Therefore, one is looking not only for the plain words in the language but for the order of words proper in that language.
In the end, though sometimes frustrating, this sort of thing keeps life interesting and challenging, for me anyway. It seems amazing, and somehow delightful, that something as basic and essential as language should remain so elusive.
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