The Indonesian word for "daddy" is the same as the Hindi word for "sister." Imagine my confusion, then, when the librarian at Zack's school said she would check out our extra books (I had picked too many and was over my 5 book parent allowance) under "Didi's account."
My thought was, "what does a sister have to do with the library? Zack doesn't even have a sister."
It actually took me two days to figure out that she meant she had checked the extra books out under John's name.
Didis aside, I feel like I'm starting to gain a bit of momentum with Bahasa. I practice with the embassy motor pool drivers who take me to and from Zack's school each day (we are allowed to use the embassy motor pool for our first 30 days at post; they're a bit cheaper than taxis). Pak John said my Indonesian is excellent, but I think he was just being nice, since all I asked him was, "siapa namamu?" and told Gabriel how to count to three: "satu, dua, tiga." I did have a taxi driver thinking I was fluent, though. After he jabbered at me for several seconds I finally interrupted him with, "Bak, saya mungerti Bahasa Indonesia sidikit saja!" I'll take the small victories.
I'm studying hard on my own and once I have a bit of a grasp I'll take some courses to kick me up a notch. The main difference between the ease of learning Bahasa over the difficulty of learning Hindi is the characters. It's so much easier to learn the language when you can read signs all over the city. I can read Hindi script painfully slowly, so forget reading roadsigns and ads when I'm riding in a tuk tuk. In Jakarta I spend a lot of our traffic-slowed commutes reading signs and using my iPhone to translate them.
I leave you with a cute Gabriel story:
He gets to watch TV while I clean the house in the morning. Today he chose "Happy Feet Two." Let me disclaim this atrocity by stating that this was given to us by a neighbor. I did not buy this movie. Gabriel watched it for about 5 minutes before getting up, turning off the TV, and coming downstairs to me to announce, "Mommy, I don't yike dat movie. It's too compikated." He read books instead.
My thought was, "what does a sister have to do with the library? Zack doesn't even have a sister."
It actually took me two days to figure out that she meant she had checked the extra books out under John's name.
Didis aside, I feel like I'm starting to gain a bit of momentum with Bahasa. I practice with the embassy motor pool drivers who take me to and from Zack's school each day (we are allowed to use the embassy motor pool for our first 30 days at post; they're a bit cheaper than taxis). Pak John said my Indonesian is excellent, but I think he was just being nice, since all I asked him was, "siapa namamu?" and told Gabriel how to count to three: "satu, dua, tiga." I did have a taxi driver thinking I was fluent, though. After he jabbered at me for several seconds I finally interrupted him with, "Bak, saya mungerti Bahasa Indonesia sidikit saja!" I'll take the small victories.
I'm studying hard on my own and once I have a bit of a grasp I'll take some courses to kick me up a notch. The main difference between the ease of learning Bahasa over the difficulty of learning Hindi is the characters. It's so much easier to learn the language when you can read signs all over the city. I can read Hindi script painfully slowly, so forget reading roadsigns and ads when I'm riding in a tuk tuk. In Jakarta I spend a lot of our traffic-slowed commutes reading signs and using my iPhone to translate them.
I leave you with a cute Gabriel story:
He gets to watch TV while I clean the house in the morning. Today he chose "Happy Feet Two." Let me disclaim this atrocity by stating that this was given to us by a neighbor. I did not buy this movie. Gabriel watched it for about 5 minutes before getting up, turning off the TV, and coming downstairs to me to announce, "Mommy, I don't yike dat movie. It's too compikated." He read books instead.
1 comment:
I yike Gabey stories. Glad you are settling in quickly.
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