Julie and I have transitioned to the topic of Indonesian prefixes/suffixes because she realized it is something I have been struggling with recently. We started the lesson by watching a video that explains a few of the main prefix/suffixes in Bahasa Indonesia. The only one I was very familiar with was the di- prefix which indicates passive form. As for the other prefix and suffixes, I have heard of them and used them, but was very unsure of their actual meanings and when to use them.
The practice assignments that Julie gave me were sentence practice with the prefixes ber- and me- as well as some exercises from a workbook. The sentence practice was quite straightforward, as it was meant for me to show my understanding of the two different forms. Though this, I learned a very important point about the prefixes ber- and me- that I had never learned nor realized while using them. When using the prefix ber-, it only applies to intransitive verbs and me- only applies to transitive verbs, meaning that me- must precede the object. I had never made that distinction before so it was extremely helpful in determining which form to use when composing sentences. It made me realize that one of my weaknesses as a heritage learner is using my own “instinct” and not learning the proper grammatical forms. I still struggle with the suffix -kan, which is often paired with the me- prefix. So for our next meeting, I want to ask Julie what the difference in meaning is when using -kan, because in some sentences it seems as though the meaning does not change.
The workbook exercise was in the form of an article that had the root form of a verb and had me fill in the correct prefix or suffix in order for the sentence to make sense. At first glance, it seemed easy because it was essentially fill in the blank, though I did have trouble because I did not know some of the root words that were used. As a result, I had to use an Indonesian dictionary to (1)look up the meaning of the root word and (2)look up the different forms with the prefix/suffix. This is because some prefix/suffixes aren’t simply attached to a root word due to the linguistic composition. For example, memasak is masak (root word) with the me- prefix attached and memakai is pakai (root word) with the me- prefix. With masak, the prefix is simply attached, but pakai is changed to memakai instead of "mepakai" due to the linguistic rules.
Other than this, I have slowly been reading the novel Bukan Pasar Malam that Julie gave me at the beginning of the semester. The book itself is very short, though I have trouble reading it because the author uses a lot of difficult vocabulary and I have to constantly look up the meaning in order to understand the sentence. As I get farther, however, I have become better at using context clues to infer the meaning which speeds up the process.
Comments
Hey Kianti! I am glad to see you are building on your Indonesian knowledge. I am not too keen on how Indonesian works but I do know it is a bit more flexible in terms of prefixes and suffixes than English because it changes the meaning and tense of the words. Do you think not formally learning the “proper” grammatical forms is only harmful in academic contexts? Or do you believe your status as a heritage speaker allows you to still have more advanced conversations than second language learners who learned proper grammatical structures?