1000 hours of Indonesian
Haven't posted about it previously because I haven't done so much indo recently, but I have reached 1000 hours!
My background
I started learning Indonesian just because I could. I had been eyeing this summer intensive course when I started college, and then I was like well I should really do the other summer program in Germany bc I already speak some German... and then covid came along and cancelled my Germany trip so I got to do the secret desire all along: indo! :) Did not know anything going in, just sounded like fun to spend a summer taking a whole lot of language classes.
At this point I've done 7 semesters worth of university classes plus some self study on the side... I really like indo! It's very different from European languages, and I really like the grammar (or maybe lack thereof haha - though I do find the prefix-suffix system very cool and practical). I have absolutely no interest in living in Indonesia (luckily for me, we know how it went with the norwegian), but as a hobby it's my favorite language for sure :)
How did I learn Indonesian
Primarily (probably like 75%) through classes and activities related to the classes (eg. homework, conversation practice with tutors and host family, tourist activities, martial arts lessons, etc). I did 3 years of summer intensive classes, the first two virtually and the 3rd in Bali for 8 weeks. Kinda traumatizing but a lot of fun! (I am not cut out for cold showers and eating rice 3x a day...). I also took a normal semester class during undergrad which ended up just being chatting for an hour a week with a tutor. On my own time I've done various other activities, some reading (webtoons, a couple books), watching youtube, some online language exchanges on apps like Tandem.
You can probably tell that the vast majority of my time has been spent speaking! Which is very out of character for me haha. I am typically much better at the input side of things than the output side (as you may have assumed by the fact that I am writing a blog. lmao nerd.) All the speaking wasn't the most efficient use of my time (certainly the 3rd summer course was more for the cultural immersion and less for the linguistic challenge). There comes a (really strange) point when you talk that much where you feel like every word you know is in your active vocab, like every word you can understand you can also say. (So at that point I really could've benefitted from, like, reading a book, instead of being in a summer program where pretty much all I did was talk to people day in day out.) But it was a very interesting experience to be forced to talk so much, considering it's not something I would ever choose to do on my own.
I don't think it would've been the same, or as fun, to learn indo on my own. For one there aren't as many resources for it. (It's impossible to get indonesian books outside of indonesia, for instance!) But the classes were excellent for the cultural and social aspects, and all the Indonesians I've gotten to talk to are so friendly and helpful.
My skills
I'm somewhere in the high B1-low B2 range.
- Speaking: Like I said before, I have done way too much speaking and I can say everything lmao I have no shame
- Listening: I can typically easily understand scripted youtube videos on a variety of subjects. More conversational stuff it depends on the topic. I suspect it also depends on if they're speaking "proper indo" or a strong dialect (usually jakarta on youtube), though it's hard to tell if it's just speaking too fast for me to follow or if the words are actually different. Movies introduce a 3rd problem because then they might just start speaking a regional language and I would never know (with my hardcoded english subs on the movies from the library)...
- Reading: I can read novels with difficulty. There are a lot of words I don't know, on the order of 15 unknowns per page, which is where it starts getting dicey. I can follow the overall plot for sure, but I lose some details. I've read some webtoons, a children's book and a light novel, and right now I'm working on Belantara (The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin, 2nd in the 3 body problem series). Belantara is hard, but it's political sci-fi so I'm not surprised. (quick PSA: The 3 body problem is great and I would recommend if you like sci-fi, but make sure to NOT read anything about it, including the blurb on the back of the book, because it's major spoilers!) Reading is a lot more difficult compared to Norwegian, because in Norwegian odds are very good that any word I haven't seen before has a cognate in English/French/German, whereas Indo I get no hints and I have no chance of guessing! (Other than a fair bit of technical vocab from English. So I may have better odds with the political sci-fi compared to fantasy)
- Writing: I can write the essays in the B2 level BIPA textbook. Thus far they've all been argumentative essays, and similar to what I was doing in the B2 norwegian class. There are a lot of basic words I have to look up because I am very rusty, but then it's like "oh duh" when I see them. It's nice how the book is structured, because you get to learn a bunch of vocab from the texts and then directly put it into practice in the exercises and essays. I can also write journal entries in Indo, I don't have too many issues talking about my daily life (other than ofc the rusty vocab).
What have I done recently?
The current bout of Indonesian started around 3 weeks ago. Since then I've been doing a few things:
- BIPA textbook: There are a bunch of free textbooks online made by the Indonesian government for foreigners learning Indonesian. Last I checked the website was down, but at least I have some saved (more than I will have the motivation to complete anyway!). They're quite nice and well structured, you start each chapter with conversation questions about a topic, and then you read and respond to qs about one text, and then you read a 2nd text and write 2 little essays, and then you read a final text at the end. So 4 little focus areas within one broader subject. It's meant for a class, but it's not so bad to do as self study. If I were more serious, I'd need to get corrected: I could pay for a tutor to correct my essays and have some conversation practice once a week or so. But I absolutely do not have that kind of time right now lol
- Reading: I have a bet going with a friend on whether he can finish the 3 body problem before I can finish Belantara (the 2nd book of the 3 body problem). He has a vast advantage lol. But it's good motivation to actually make some progress on this monster of a book!! (625 pages...)
- I'm trying to make some flashcards for the vocab that I keep seeing over and over in Belantara. I don't know the best way to do this yet. Sentence mining (making flashcards with a sentence on one side and the english translation on the other) takes FOREVER and it's super boring but I don't have any better ideas at the moment. Indo words are too hard to put just the word by itself. I'd like to look up the words in the indo dictionary first, and then the english dictionary if I don't understand, but that also takes forever. We'll see what I end up with I guess. But regardless I need to do something to learn vocab because otherwise I just read the same words over and over and never learn what they mean.
- Around Christmas I did some exercises on GLOSS, it's a US gov site with a bunch of good textbook-like exercises (including listening ones!). Especially useful for lesser-studied languages. I have the textbook for now, but can keep this in mind for the future.
- I watched the movie Merantau, it was actually pretty fun. Movies are hard to understand. I mean, I get what's going on, but specific details of what they're saying are always a problem. Don't know if it's dialects/regional languages or just the mumbling/fast speed.
- Sometimes I do some journaling, trying to get back into that too. Especially good for all of my langs to get more practice in talking about my daily life
- Indonesian youtube is excellent, definitely the language with the best youtube after english. I typically listen to youtube in english while I'm cooking dinner or doing chores, which ends up being a lot of time, so I am trying to convert that over to indo hours.
- I just found a grammar textbook too the other day on my resource hunt. It's always a challenge to find resources for indo, but for once I actually have more ideas than I have time!!
The plans
The last few weeks I've had a good balance of doing Norwegian in my daily activities/events, and then in my free time focusing on Indo. I get quite a bit of Norwegian in my daily life (norwegian class, teaching, meetings, events, etc). Comes out to around 12h a week of scheduled activities(!!), not to mention all the other random little bits that come with living in Norway. I really do not have very much free time this semester for other language stuff, but when I get the chance my goals are:
- Listen to indo youtube instead of english youtube while working around the house
- Read 10 pages of Belantara a day
- Listen to the news in norwegian sometimes when walking to work
- Write in journal when I feel like it (can be in any lang or english depending on how i'm feeling)
- Make some progress on my sweater!!!
- Finish reading Språket som vart norsk (norwegian linguistics book)
- Do indo textbook (or french textbook lol) if I have any free time???
Expect also Norwegian updates very soon... :)