Podcast #42 - Why Does Spoken Indonesian Sound So Different? [English Audio]

 

                Hello everyone. Welcome to Bet.ID 5-Minute Podcast where you can sharpen your Indonesian skills by listening to everyday topics and getting to know more about Indonesia and its culture. I’m Jeff

                Today I’m gonna be talking about a question from those who are learning Indonesian. They asked about why does everyday Indonesian sound so different compared to written Indonesian. Well, before I answer this question, if you’d like to read the transcripts for this episode you can always click the link down below

                Perhaps, if you have been learning Indonesian formally and trying to practise your listening by watching Indonesian films, you would know that the language that is used in the film is so different with the language that you’ve been learning. Why is it?

                Actually, it depends on how do you learn Indonesian. Since if you have learnt it at school or on the internet but using the uncredible sources, you would likely have been taught the formal Indonesian such as, ‘Anda and the usage of many affixes’, which is actually rarely used in everyday Indonesian

                Furthermore, you need to be aware of the two kinds of language that are being used in spoken Indonesian, standard Indonesian and Indonesian with an accent such as Javanese Indonesian accent, Jakartan Indonesian accent, etc.

                The most common and the one that you would likely to hear when you’re watching an Indonesian film is the Jakartan accent and not the standard one that’s why you would find it difficult to undertand

                What’s the main difference of these two accents? First, we need to know what’s the difference of written Indonesian and spoken Indonesian. The main difference is in written Indonesian you must use the affixes whilst in spoken Indonesian you will only need to use some or even drop them at all.

For example, in written Indonesian you would likely to say, ‘Saya membaca buku kemudian saya mendengarkan musik’ whilst in spoken Indonesian they would be, ‘Saya baca buku terus saya dengarkan musik’, yet in Jakartan accent it would be, ‘Gue baca buku terus gue dengerin musik’. So there are some affixes which are unique to Jakartan accent. I’ll talk about it in the future podcasts

                So, if you’d like to listen to standard Indonesian you can find some films which are not Indonesian films but already be dubbed to Indonesian. Generally, such films would use standard Indonesian or you can also listen to my podcast since I always put much effort to speak in standard Indonesian

                How is it in your country then, is the written language really different compared to the spoken one? That’s pretty much everything for this episode. Thank you for listening. If you wanna learn Indonesian online, just click the link down below. See you!