Journal 2

[Bowman Rains]

            In my second week of working with Thalia, I am working on greetings and introductions.  We first worked on the equivalent of saying good morning/afternoon/night.  In Indoesia, the day is broken into 4 parts instead of 3.  The 4 parts of the day are broken up into specific times of the day.  This is a little difficult to understand as somone who has only known 3 parts of a day.  The four parts of the day are selamat pagi/siang/sore/malam.  We are also working on sentence structure.  In Indonesian, there is not a “to be” verb.  The direct translation, for instance, of “I am well” is simply “baik”.  Not being able to directly translate a sentence word for word is different to me.  I have taken Spanish and Latin, and this is much different.  In Spanish, you translate word for word.  In Latin, you may not translate every word, but you utilize case endings to demonstrate a direct object, indirect object, or possession.  To understand this concept, I need to work on understanding this difference by seeing more examples.  As far as learning the vocabulary, I think I have done a good job of keeping up.  I have worked on memorizing the information by quizzing myself and looking at flashcards.  I am looking forward to using this basic information I have learned to start understanding sentence structure and start a conversation with an Indonesian speaker.  To ensure further learning, I have been reading the textbook that Thalia provided us.