Free Language courses: First Words In Indonesian And Malaysian

Petronas Towers, KL, capital of Malaysia. Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones played characters in Entrapment, who escaped, suspended from the bridge between the towers.

You want to learn a language if you are an expat in a country, doing business there, or likely to visit.
Why would you want to visit Malaysia or Indonesia, apart from adding two more countries? You might want to see the Petronas Towers, known as Menara Petronas (notice the adjective first). That's where Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones acted in the film (Americans say movie) called Entrapment.

Problems
Duolingo offers a dozen free language starter courses with more in the pipeline and you can sign up to be informed when the new ones start. I signed up for Indonesian because it was almost the same as Malaysian which was easy to pick up from signs when we drove up to the pretty pink port city of Malacca from Singapore.

Later, we drove on to KL to see the Petronas Towers which feature in the film Entrapment starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery.

I must admit before visiting both Malaysia and Indonesia I never initially saw the use of Indonesian. I never knew where I could learn it. I assumed it would be difficult. I was wrong.

Answers
Indonesian and Malay are almost the same apart from a little vocabulary. The grammar and sentence structure is simple, like Chinese.

Singaporean flag.

Singapore
Indonesian / Malay is also one of the four languages in Singapore. So you hear it on the station announcements when you take the trains, and see it on signs at MRT railway stations, lifts and exits, and on buses. The announcements end with the words for thank you, terimah kasih. I think of terribly grateful. Greetings often include the word Selamat, like salaam.

Four-language signs in Singapore include the Malay language.

The Malay for Botanic Gardens. 

Another warning sign in Malay.

Indonesian-Malay words are easy, like English with American spelling, but even more simplified. For example, apple is apel.

Duolingo has just started teaching Indonesian basic for free.

Just a few words, with my memory aids in brackets:

Indonesian - English

air - water (think of droplets of rain in the air)
apel - apple/ apples / an apple
itu - that / it's (the letters it in itu and it's)
jeruk - orange or oranges (juicy orange ok!) in Indonesian; oren in Malay
kamu - you / your (the word with u on the end is you)

makan - eat / ate / eating (making another meal such as lunch, makan)
minum - drink (keep your drinking of alchol to the minimum in muslim majority countries)
saya - I / me / my (what I say is all about me - everybody is more interested in themselves)
susu - milk (milk sustains you)
punya - have (p for possess)

English - Indonesian

apple / apples / an apple - apel
drink - minum
eat - makan
have - punya
I / me / my - saya

it's / that - itu
milk - susu
orange - jeruk
water - air
you / your - kamu

I have other posts on the Malay language and signs on stations and in trains.

Useful Websites For Travellers and Language Learners
duolingo.com
INDONESIA
indonesiatouristboard.com
MALAYSIA
visitmalaysia.com
SINGAPORE
visitsingapore.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. I have other posts on learning languages and visiting Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
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