Towards the beginning of my Indonesian study, I would write out new words Julie would introduce to us in my notebook and review the words outside of our meetings, using them to make new sentences in my head. Now I mostly type my homework assignments so that they can be shared with the rest of the group via Google Docs. I usually prefer to write free-hand for lecture notes and personal reminders, but I find it nice to type in Indonesian because Thalia and Julie can go over my work and not be slowed down by the weird style of cursive that I use most of the time.
I have had a growing awareness of the importance of prefixes in Indonesian, and verb structures have been becoming more understandable as a result. Having English as my main source of reference for sentence structure means that sometimes my sentences are clunky to a native speaker, but this has been ameliorated through corrections of my homework assignments.
For our meeting with Julie this week, we will be continuing on the trend of last meeting's assignment (a brief history of Indonesia from 1900-1950) to complete a brief history of Indonesia from 1950-1998 using only Bahasa Indonesia. For Thalia, we completed a short description of our living situations including describing our homes and the areas that surround them using new vocabulary related to locations, businesses, and geography. For this week we are researching "Bahasa Gaul", or slang language/language for socialization, and using new-found words from a Facebook page dedicated to exploring Indonesian slang terms to incorporate them into new sentences. I am especially excited for this part because it is important for me to build up conversational Indonesian skills, and this is the style of Indonesian that is much more commonplace for everyday interpersonal communication.
Comments
Zach, it's really cool that you type stuff in Indonesian. Is it easier or more difficult, in your opinion, to type in a foreign language than it is to write?