21 Nov 09 Indonesian Grammar

Do I need to learn Indonesian Grammar?

Having trouble with your Indonesian grammar lately? Confused on the right words to choose, or not really sure when to use the right punctuation, and sometimes your subject and your verb just does not come in agreement with each other. Do you often find yourself getting caught up with those Indonesian grammar dilemmas? Actually when you learn Indonesian, you can forget learning about the grammar if your only goal is to be able to converse in Indonesian. Therefore it is highly suggested that beginners should not learn Indonesian grammar at all (which can be confusing sometimes) at the early stages of the Indonesian learning process since we can still communicate in Indonesian even when you hardly know anything about Indonesian grammar.The Indonesians rarely use the proper grammar in their daily conversation. The Indonesians only use the proper Indonesian grammar in their formal writing or any formal occasions, such as news broadcast or formal speech. Therefore rather than worrying about your grammar issues and wasting your valuable time and effort on checking errors with your Indonesian sentences, why not consider getting more vocabularies and phrases mostly used in daily conversation? That way you can communicate in Indonesian more quickly.

However if you intend to learn in depth Indonesian language, including the writing Indonesian language, you’ll need to learn about the Indonesian grammar as well, especially for those in the intermediate and advanced level. The knowledge about Indonesian grammar includes the knowledge about suffixes and prefixes and how to form different words with different meanings with those suffixes and prefixes.

Examples of Indonesian Grammar

Unlike the English language, Indonesian grammar is much more simple and easy to understand, though it might seem confusing in the later stages. However many English speakers can succeed speaking in Indonesian quite well even though they never really learn Indonesian grammar formally.

Below are some examples of how different suffixes and prefixes can form a new word with different meaning:

Adjective	Noun	Verb
Kuat (strong)	Kekuatan (strength)	Menguatkan (strengthen)
Aman (safe)	Keamanan (safety)	Mengamankan (save)
Ragu-ragu (doubtful)	Keraguan (doubt)	Meragukan (doubt)
Bersih (clean)	Kebersihan (cleanliness)	Membersihkan (clean)
Puas (satisfied)	Kepuasan (satisfaction)	Memuaskan (satisfy)

Indonesian Grammar

So actually it is not difficult at all to learn about the Indonesian grammar. All you need is only the key and formula and lots of practice and practice.

For the intermediate and advanced learners, it is necessary to learn about the Indonesian grammar which is mostly used in formal Indonesian language, such as in newspapers, magazines, news broadcast (either on television or in radio) and speech. At the end of the session, the learners should be able to compose a formal Indonesian composition or speech. They should also be able to read newspapers and magazines which use very formal Indonesian language.

So Indonesian grammar is just a tiny part of the Indonesian language which shouldn’t scare you off at all.

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