Day 30 saya bisa berbicara bahasa indonesian

Well, its the last day of the 30-day language challenge, and I've spend most of the day thinking over what I had learned and consider whether or not I had learned anything at all. The answer I came to when I was thinking about what I had learned, how much I could have learned, and how much I could now say, I came to the decision that I did, in fact, learn Indonesian. Thinking about whether or not I could survive in Indonesia, I came to feel like I could. In 30 days, I went from being a person who knew nothing about Indonesia and didn't know a word, to a guy who could meet an Indonesian exchange student at PSU and get to know them. And all this done while working 40+ hours a week, spending 5 days in DC, and juggling my personal life.

Here's what I determined the rules for Day 30:

1.       Review your notebook and flashcards. 

2.       Review Chapters 1-28 of your course book.

3.       OPTIONAL: Complete missing lessons of your language audio.

4.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

So, now that I reviewed everything I had studied, realized that I was still behind on vocabulary, and deciding that I did learn Indonesian, I have come to the unequivocal decision that a person, even as busy as I, could learn a foreign in 30 days. I amend this comment to clarify that by that I mean that a person can go from knowing nothing to being an Intermediate learning 30 days. Thus, a person can go from being a non-speaker, to a person who has completed the basic levels, can have conversations, survive market places, search for objects, take mass transit, order from a restaurant, and even beginning dating.

So any person who wishes to travel to another country, following the right study guide, should and would be able to blend into the society and not get caught up in "tourist traps," or be immediately pegged as a lost person with only 30 days of preparation. I hold this to be true and I challenge anyone to prove to me that they can't learn a language in 30 days while committing themselves to real and honest effort and work.

Good luck with your studying people. I wish upon all the skills and blessing of understanding.

Day 28 and 29 Saya makin lama makin belajar

Well, I wasn't able to post yesterday because I worked from 8am to 11pm, but I was able to review what I had covered and glance forward on what I had left. I didn't realize that the Tuttle book only has 28 chapters, which means that Day 30 will be a whole book review day, which I think will be a good way to end the 30 day challenge. Before I continue, here's the rules for the days.

Day 28 rules (Review 4)

1.       Review your notebook and flashcards, note how much you've learned in 21 days. 

2.       Review Chapters 22-27 of your course book.

3.       OPTIONAL: Complete missing lessons of your language audio.

4.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

5.       Study flashcards before going to bed

Day 29 rules:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 28 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 21.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

Upon reviewing, I realized that I covered about 2700 vocabulary over the last 27 days, I had actually only intaken about 600 of those words because of my lack of free time and my inability to look over vocab cards while at work without getting fired. I also realized that I could form some pretty cool sentences in Indonesian, but they all still sounded pretty basic. I haven't branched into deeper and more strenuous concepts yet, which I think is a goal for me in the near future.

As for day 29, I didn't really understand my news article. I think it was something to do with disabilities and the two schools of thought regarding how to handle disabilities. It was complicated, but I fought my way through. I looked up a bunch more words than I have recently, so that was a bad sign.

But I did learn how to make a very cool sentence (see above). I'm looking forward to reviewing the entire book tomorrow when I have free time.

Day 27 kalau saya pergi ke Indonesia, mungkin saya bisa mengarti?

Again, I woke up early, and again I studied. I wanted to get it done before I had to leave to make contact with the Financial Aid office, which I have to do today, because it appears as though it might be a fairly busy day today. Which sucks.

Here's the rules for day 27:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 27 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 20.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

I think that the Tuttle lessons were organized in the wrong order. I just covered conjunctions in Lesson 27, things like, "When" and "If" and "although." I think I understand the concept they were trying to make, must understand how verbs work in Indonesian to be able to form sentences, but at the same time, I think I would have been able to figure it out with a dozen chapters on verbs BEFORE a chapter on conjunctions. I think my failing with Indonesian is one part my lack of being able to study note cards, and two because the book is organized in the worst way possible.

I'm still behind in the audio files. I plan to finish though. Definitely in my plan. I'm obviously not going to be at 23 by Monday, but I'm hoping to be close and then finish it off by the 2nd of August. I'll do up to 30 by the 10th, and then I will be what Pimsleur considers a decent speaker.

All of this to prove a point. Hopefully knowing Indonesian pays off in the end.

Day 26 Cicak! saya mau cicak hari ini

So today, I woke up and studied Indonesian early again. This is working out alot better than I thought. Yeah, I know I hate getting up before noon, but I also hate going to bed before 2am, and that seems to be happening anyway, so I'm going with it. This new momentum to study has helped motivate me and get things going for the last week of my study. I have 4 days, and the question I must ask myself is "Have I learned Indonesian." More on that in later posts. For now...

And here's Day 26:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 26 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 19.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

So, I'm still behind on my audio files, but I did 16 today. I'm going to try to do 17 (which I know is against the pimsleur rules) by the end of the day so as to be able to be closer to my goal and also so that I can do one on review day and hopefully catch up. The audio files are getting more difficult, not because I don't know what they are asking, but because the time between question and answer is about half what it used to be. I noticed that yesterday and timed it and they really did shorten the time. I now understand why I feel like I backpedaled.

The news article today was on gambling during Ramadan. I didn't realize it was Ramadan, which was the first thing I found out, but the next thing I found out is that apparently its illegal to gamble during Ramadan, which the Indonesian police enforced. That was the most interesting part of the article, that the government enforces religious rules.

But today's lesson from the chapter only contained 64 new words and had one grammar principle "which/that". I was more interested in the topic of the lesson, which was "Cicak" or "wall lizards." Apparently people in Indonesia commonly have lizards that climb their walls at night and go after bugs. How cool is that? I want a wall lizard to eat all the bugs in the Fraternity House. We could name it "Delty" and make sure that all the bugs are gone. Perfect right? With would be a "Phi-ter."

Anyway, I'm beginning to like Indonesian again. Too bad it came at the end of the month. I guess that would make an interesting graph.

Day 24 and 25 Tolong berikan saya waktu. Kita perlu waktu untuk belajar

So, you see that I had to do a double post. That's because I worked 12 hours yesterday, from 10am to 10pm, and upon returning, it seems that everyone had gone out drinking, so I was busy with people coming home and needing to be put to bed. The moral of the story was that even though I studied, I was unable to post. So, today, there is a double post. I hope to finish strong and not have double posts like this anymore.

Here's the rules for Day 24:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 24 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 17.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

And here's Day 25:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 25 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 18.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

As you guys know, I'm behind on the audio files, they got harder and I didn't have the $24 for the next CD set. Well, I got my paycheck and fortunately had enough disposable income to purchase that set. So today, Day 25, I did lesson 15 and tomorrow I will start 16, and hopefully, I'll be caught up by the 30th. I'm back ontrack for that.

Chapter 24 was more about the confix (as I'm calling it now) of ber- -an, and its effect on verbs. There were 110 vocabulary in this chapter, which has been the stumbling block and the thing standing in the way of my desire to learn Indonesian. I have a back log of so many, that my motivation is turning off. I think that 50 words a day would be much more reasonable.

Chapter 25 was a nice refresher chapter. It still had 70 words, but the actually lesson portion of the chapter covered nominalization with -nya, and the reduplication of verbs. I think that the reduplication section would be much better served near the beginning, but I understand it now and that's really all that matters.

I did not have time to cover a newspaper article, which is bad, but tomorrow I will. Time for me to return to cleaning the house before I leave for work yet again. Good luck on your language study efforts.

Day 23 saya bisa berbicara bahasa indonesia, tapi sebenarnya bicara bahasa indonesia tersulit sekali

Today I was working for most of the day, but I managed to finally get time to start studying after I got off work. I spent an hour and some change reading over the different affixes. I'm not sure I grasp them completely, but I do now understand how they work. I think that I'm going to have to work with them alot more before I'm going to be able to create decent sentences from scratch. I'm trying pretty hard to do it, and I get the process will be a marathon, not a sprint.

Here's the rules for Day 23:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 23 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 16.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

Like I said, today was a little bit more of a review than I wanted, but I'm getting a decent handle on the affixes. I understand that, like English, there's no hard, fast rules for these things, so it's merely a matter of getting over it.

As far as new articles, it seems that accidents have been going out of control despite having new enforcement of rules in Jakarta. I think that traffic will likely be a problem in Indonesia for a long time, just as it is in Korea and the United States. I'm not sure how they can handle that. But, as far as the language went, there were quite a few words in this section of reading, it was a little too difficult for me.

However, Chapter 23 was significantly easier now that I spent a portion of my study time just cover the affixes. Today's lesson covered the -an suffix, which is apparently used (in most cases) the way that you take an Indonesian verb and turn it into noun (like to train => training). This was easier to understand because I had just read the explanation. So, it looks like things are going well.

I do need to remotivate myself for the home stretch. Only one week left and now I need to prove whether or not this can be done. These last 7 days will make or break whether or not I can actually say that a person can learn a foreign language in 30 days.

Day 22 Review #3 Saya bisa bicara bahasa indonesia

Well, today was pretty hectic too, but I got a chance to review. It's too bad that I have to work at 6am tomorrow, otherwise I would have studied more. I brought up the page on affixes and discovered that there were 40 of them. The website I found does explain it quite well, so that definitely a relief. But I got too tired to finish the whole page, so I copied it, turned it into a PDF, and I plan on studying it later. However, I'd like to thank TruAlfa & IndoDic.com for their complete Indonesia affix site. Extremely helpful thank you.

Here's the rules for the Third Review day, which I turned into Day 22 because I forgot yesterday:

1.       Review your notebook and flashcards, note how much you've learned in 21 days. 

2.       Review Chapters 16-22 of your course book.

3.       OPTIONAL: Complete missing lessons of your language audio.

4.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

5.       Study flashcards before going to bed

So, I discovered today that I have 1000 words. That is far far too many words to try to study to get down my throat in the remaining 8 days. I feel like I'm likely going to turn my 30 language challenge into a 60 day language challenge. Unless I decide to try to learn 150 words a day. I can attempt it, but I feel that I won't retain that many.


However, I really am extremely dedicated to learning Indonesian now. I'm loving Indonesian movies and music, and this language is actually super fun, especially now that I know about the affixes better. And will learn more when I continue to study. I need to dedicate time to learn the affixes to the best of my abilities, but in 22 days, I have come super far and don't plan of giving up. I will become proficient in Indonesian.

Day 21 Not Review Day

So, despite the fact that I was really looking forward to a review day, when the one finally came along, I was busy with 2 different work sites and couple of other projects that I spaced it was a review day and ended up studying chapter 22. I would rather have redoubled my efforts and figured out what I was doing and where I was going. I'm going to make Day 22 a review, but I'll cover what I covered today.

Here's the rules for day 22 now changed to day 21 because I wasn't paying attention:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 22 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 15.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

Lesson 22 was sorta anti-climatic after lessons 20 and 21. There was alot of stuff covered, but mostly it covered the ter- prefix, which is apparently for stative verbs. Tomorrow during the review, I'm going to have to figure out more about these affixes.

I didn't end up reading a news article, though I should have when I had free time, but I did cover lesson 14 from the Pimsleur audio for the 3rd time. I'm actually done with it, but I don't have the money to purchase the next CD, so I'm paused doing 13 and 14 and I'll do 15 on Monday.

Good luck people.

Day 20 Tolong! Saya kecapaian kalau begitu saya perlu hari libur

I was up until 5am last night because I was at the midnight opening of The Dark Knight Rises at the Beaverton Cinetopia yesterday. Good movie, by the way, if you haven't seen it, I suggest you do so. But anyway, I was up until 5am, so getting up at 10 am and studying Indonesian was incredibly difficult today. However, I managed to pull it off by the skin of my teeth.

Here's the rules for Day 20:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 21 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 14.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

So, today's chapter was not as complex as previous chapters, however, after yet another lesson in affixes, I think it's high time that I see if there isn't some sort of complied list of Indonesian affixes somewhere. My little Brother Dono informed me that he found a great webpage on Indonesian Affixes when he her my complaint about the strange way the course book is presenting them, so I'm gonna look into that tomorrow, during my review day, I think. I'm seriously looking forward to review day because I feel like I'm beginning to burn out. Part of me is starting to dislike the Indonesia complexities of affixes and thus wanting to skip every lesson that deals with them. But I trudge along, trying my best to reinvigorate my love of languages and my desire to complete this system.

I am coming to the conclusion, however, that the wrong book (and I'm beginning to think Tuttle Publishing's Basic Indonesia is the wrong book) can actually hinder the 30-day-language process. 100+ words a day is difficult, along with haphazard examples and explanations. You definitely need the write kinds of books or else 30 days will not be sufficient. I'm beginning to think that it might actually be better to focus on specific targets of learning for the first 2 weeks and then branch into the coursebook on day 15. I also think that it might work out better to turn it into a 60 day program instead, which would help deal with the plethora of words that I need to learn.

That being said, I still think that at the end of these 30 days, I'm going to beyond a beginner level and into the intermediate bracket. Maybe that'll be enough to prove my point and maybe that will also be enough to gain me brownie points in my future career paths in foreign relations. Or maybe not, we'll see.

Day 19 saya penulis, tapi saya tidak bisa menulis kalimat-kalimat dalam bahasa indonesia

So today was no cakewalk. Apparently, I didn't think that the reason yesterday contained a small number of words was probably because today would have even more than any other chapter. There were 140 words today. 140 words. The problem with the system of studying a foreign language is not flawed, so far as I can tell, for if you had a reasonable and contiguous number of things to study (i.e. 50 words a day for example), then you would be fine. But here, I keep running into a fluctuating amount of words, and these words are really beginning to get out of control. Today the word "General Election" appeared. I'm sorta beginning to think that a better book would have helped alot.

Here's the rules for day 19:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 20 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 13.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

So, at this point, I'm really beginning to regret having bought the book I did. It's getting to the point where I have an unbearable amount of vocabulary to learn and I still don't have a very concise understanding of Basic Indonesian Grammar Principles. There's a couple of Indonesian Grammar books that I'm thinking about looking into and maybe by Saturday I will have figured one out, one that can help me get a much stronger grasp on the ber-, men-, memper-, ter-, per- prefixes and the -kan,-an,-i suffixes. As far as I can tell, these are the only affixes, but they can be combined in certain cases, which makes things a little complicated. Hopefully I'll have this sorted out by Sunday, so that my last full week of studying will be extremely productive.

As far as the news goes, it seems that there area going to 19 national holidays in 2013, which sounds like it will be fun. I won't be there obviously, but it could be awesome for those in Indonesia.

My audio lessons went as to be expected, which is to say that I had to listen to it twice. But the fact is, it wasn't 3 times, which at least means I did better than yesterday. I will be able to Indonesian by the end of this month, I swear it.

Day 18 Berapa Saya harus bayar agar mengarti terbahasa indonesia?

So, I'm getting to the point where I wish I could just fork over the right amount of cash to have this system complete. I'm really liking the study, it's just beginning to interfere with my normal life, my hanging out with friends, etc. I mean, consider that I have to study at least 1 hour for the news article and the coursebook, but then you have the hidden time, etc. Plus, if my abilities to keep up with the Pimsleur audio continue to suck this much, I'm gonna have to go over the audio lessons multiple times a day, which takes time. I guess its a matter of time, not motivation, because I continue to go strong.

Before I get too far along, here's the rules for day 18:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 19 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 12.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

Having switched from my previously obtained Pimsleur audio files and the Audible.com files, I was having trouble with words I hadn't heard before. One concept standing out was the concept of 2 verbs back to back. I still need to learn that because it sounds like there's something in between and I'm not quite catching it. I've been trying to figure it out, but it's probably just a verb form I never learned. This meant I had to do the audio lesson 3 times today. I finally began to get the hang of it. Numbers are starting to become my friends.

In other news, the news stated that the government and ITB (an institution in Indonesia) are going to be teaming up with Koreans to produce Cyber Security Experts. I'm getting the feeling that Indonesia has a very week Cyber Structure. So, it seems we have the first of the Indonesian "Net Force." (My Clancy-fan friends are excited).

But the lesson I learned today was on requests, commands, orders, and prohibitions. It was an interesting lesson that refers back to the concepts of passive and active verbs, which I'm still a little fuzzy on, but I was excited that there were only 36 new vocabulary words this chapter. Not a problem at all. So, now I know that "Silakan duduk di sini" means "Please sit here."

I hope your studies are coming along as well as mine are.

Day 17 mungkin kalau saya akan makan di indonesia restoran, saya bisa berbahasa indonesia

So today was a busy day, what with having to work from 2pm to 10pm (dari jam dua ke jam sepuluh). However, I was able to study and to go over some of the flashcards and even get through the audio files. Somehow, supposing all goes well, I'll be able to get this post out in time to be on the right day.

Here's the rules for day 17:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 18 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 11.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

Well, as far as my newspaper article went, it seems that the price of Rice in Central Kalimantan has remained steady, despite the lack of foreign imported rice. The reason? The government has a stockpile that can supply the area for the next 6 months. This is great. Constant few and reasonable prices.

My chapter was a little bit of a challenge today. Today it was all about passive voice. That's a little complicated, but having studied languages before, I'm fully aware of how and what a passive sentence does. So it was merely a matter of figuring out the specifics in Indonesian. I think I get it though, even if poor Joel had to be interviewed in the process (these are the characters of the Coursebook).

Actually, my biggest challenge today was the audio file. Apparently I had an set for lessons 1-10 as I did 11, which I recently downloaded through iTunes and Audible.com, so there were some words I didn't know that I was expected to, like mungkin. It means "Maybe." Maybe I'm a Mung kin, Maybe I'm not. That was my memory tool. I figured it out though. I had to do the audiofile twice to complete it, which was a first, but I'm not ashamed. 11 days ago, I found "Saya bisa bicara bahasa indonesia" to be hard, so when I'm saying, "Kalau begitu bapak mau minum sesuatu dengan kami jam sembilan di tempat saya malam ini?" 11 days later, I have no qualms with repeating a lesson.

Things are coming together well my friends. Coming together well.

Day 16 ada sih banyak kata dan saya tidak bisa belajar itu

Again, even though I had time to get alot of studying done today, I ran into another situation where there were too many words in the chapter. Today I was confronted with another 100 vocabulary words. The downside to this system is that I was unable to take into account that the chapters would increase their required amount of vocabulary as they went. I don't feel that the chapters are getting harder so much as they are simply throwing more words at me, as if I'm supposed to be able to learn all 100 words by the end of the day. I usually get through about 30-40 a day, which I find to be much more realistic. If I continue to follow the amount in the coursebook, I'm going to find that I know 3000+ words by the end of the book, which is way higher than I was intending. I've already had to adjust from 300+ words to ~1800 words, so something is going to have to give.

Here's the rules for day 16:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 17 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 10.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

I realized today that at the rate I'm headed, I will complete 22 of the 30 Pimsleur Indonesian lessons by July 30th. That's a good strong place to be when it comes to language learning and acquisition, I believe. I can try to push that number to 24 by the end, but I like the rate I'm going. I still need to memorize phrases, but I can say things like, "Where is Gato Sabroto Street?" and "Would you like to have lunch with me at my place at 9pm?" Not too bad.

As far as vocabulary goes, I will admit that I'm really far behind. I have about 12 vocab cards that I need to learn (They each contain about 40-50 vocab words) and that's not good. it means that I still have 600 of the 900 words I've covered so far to learn. Ninja Please. I need to step up my utilizing of hidden time better. Also, I may have to start making a rule that I finish off a card before the end of the day so that I can catch up. I will always be 12 cards behind however...

It is going well. Good luck friends.

Day 15 saya mau bicara tentang ajakan 30 hari bahasa

Another day passed and I had yet more vocabulary. It's starting to get ridiculous but I have to keep holding strong. I'm beginning to find some flaws in this 30 day plan, but I think it's mostly problems with the textbook rather than problems with the system itself. I'm not sure how I'll be able to study all 120 of today's vocabulary from the coursebook, but I will try. I'm up to over 300 I still need to try to learn.

Here's the rules for today.

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 16 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your phrasebook (Or idiom book) and begin memorizing necessary phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files and do lesson 9.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

The article I read was about a 15 year old in a motorcycle accident outside the University of Defense in central Jakarta. Apparently he died after his motorcycle crashed because he was riding drowsy. Not a good way to ride my friend, not a good way indeed. Keeping up with the news via these daily reading assignments provided by Kompas kabar is actually pretty cool. I get the unique opportunity to know what's happening in Indonesia while learning the language. It's sad that I accidentally picked an article about the death of a 15 year old kid. I feel sorry for his family.

Working in the coursebook was a little complicated today and took me almost an hour just because there were 120 vocabulary words and the grammar was on the mem- and memper- prefixes and the -kan and -i suffixes. I'm not sure I understand very well, but I get that these indicate different kinds of transitive verbs and their level of action, such as causative, but it wasn't a thorough explanation, so I was scratching my head alot of the time. If there was some kind of chart that had a couple of base verbs and then had all the possible prefixes and suffixes and combos on it, I think I would understand alot better.

All-in-all, I think I'm coming along quite well. I'm debating making a short video for youtube and for here of me speaking Indonesia and explaining the program. I think it would make the blog more clear.

Otherwise, study well, friends.

Day 14 REVIEW #2 Integrity Test

The study materials I keep referencing

Well, Day 14 was exactly what I asked for: a day to review what I've gone over and catch up on the stuff that I'm behind in. I know that these rules for learning a language are rules that I compiled and theoretically have all power over, but if anyone reading this knows me, they know that I'm a person of structure, patterns and rules, generally holding myself to a standard. If I can't follow the rules for learning a language as posted, then how can I trust my own personal integrity, the integrity of my argument that a person can learn any language in 30 days, and the integrity of language learning capabilities (or at least the honest assessment thereof).

Here's the rules for review day #2, Day 14

1.       Review your notebook and flashcards, note how much you've learned in 14 days. 

2.       Review Chapters 10-15 of your course book.

3.       OPTIONAL: Complete missing lessons of your language audio.

4.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

5.       Study flashcards before going to bed

So, I finally caught up all the vocabulary I needed to write down, which is not to say that I memorized all those words, but that I wrote them down. I now only have to worry about the upcoming vocabulary. I also managed to catch up on my Pimsleur audio files, putting me right where I should be for Day 15. This puts my at 15 lessons completed, about 900 vocabulary words, about 20-25 grammar principles and 8 lessons of Pimsleur interactive language files. I feel like I'm at a good place to say that I'm about halfway through the 30-day language program.

I've decided to start over with the phrases instead of the idioms, even though I made an idiom flashcard, because I think it's important that I begin memorizing and being able to spout out phrases at will. This will give me the ability to say that I know how to speak, hear, understand and know Indonesian.

In my final note, I discovered that there's an iPhone app that allows me to access 1 Indonesia TV station (Tri TV) and several radio stations. I plan on using this app to have more opportunities to listen to the language in action.

saya sih mau pergi ke Jakarta, dan saya sih mau bisa bicara bahasa Indonesia seperti orang Indonesia.

Day 13 saya dodol..

Day 13 posed a problem that I was unable to solve. The problem is that I have about 300 vocabulary words that I still have to study and Chapter 15 contained another 79 vocabulary words. The number of vocabulary words I'm having to learn in such a short period is starting to get ridiculous. This has taken a serious cut into my newspaper reading and language MP3 time...

Here's the rules for Day 13

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 15 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your Idiom/Slang book (if you have it, otherwise continue with the phrasebook)

6.       Find your Language Audio files and start with lesson 8.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

Chapter 15 opened with a decently long reading section, which took up a large portion of my time, but then I turned the page to the vocabulary and found the daunting 59 listed. I skipped ahead because I thought if I read the grammar, I could come back to vocabulary when I had more time. This seemed to work out well, since the only grammar lesson today was that the me- prefix on Indonesian words meant that said word was transitive (except in very rare cases).

This has me excited. I now know that be- prefixes are Intransitive and me- words are transitive, which opens up my abilities to understand quite a bit. It also means that I can words like "ajar" and turn it into words like "belajar" (to be studied) and "mengajar" (to be actively studied). So, saya belajar bahasa indonesia (I study Indonesian) versus saya mengajar bahasa indonesia (I'm studying indonesian*with effort).

Having finished my phrasebook for all the extremely necessary things, I decided to move onto my "slang/idiom" book instead of learning seriously unnecessary things like "I'm claiming two children on my taxes" which no one ever really says anyway, to more colloquial idiomatic phrases like, "kamu dodol" (you're a coconut fudge) which means "You're an idiot." Tomorrow should be a good day with reviewing, hopefully I'll have the chance to review at least 1 half of my new vocabulary.

Good luck on your language learning, my friends.

Day 12 saya tidak menyulut rokok, tapi temanku perokok

So, 12 days into my 30 day language challenge. I'm not quite halfway, but I'm far above what I was expecting in terms of vocabulary and grammar. Even though I'm tired, Today's lesson was edifying and I'm definitely rededicated to studying this language. I still need to memorize more phrases, but otherwise things are going well, and it's definitely turning out that 30 days is enough time to learn a language, especially if you put your mind to it.

Here's the rules for Day 12:

1.       Open your newspaper or magazine and continue where you left off, highlighting and reading.

2.       After 10 minutes with the newspaper, read Chapter 14 of your course book.

3.       Write in your notebook all the vocabulary from that chapter

4.       Write on the flashcards all the vocabulary from that chapter and the newspaper

5.       Find your Phrasebook and begin studying phrases.

6.       Find your Language Audio files do lesson 7.

7.       Utilize hidden time to study flashcards

8.       Study flashcards before going to bed

Remember, this is the general time breakdown for each study session

60 minute study block plan
15 minutes	Read 1 chapter of your course book
10 minutes	Read newspaper (magazine) and highlight
15 minutes	Learn 15 new nouns and supporting words
10 minutes	Learn at least 1 major grammar rule
5 minutes	Study 5 new verbs and conjugations
5 minutes	Study new phrases from your phrase book

So, at this point in time, I'm starting to learn a base number of 42 vocabulary per lesson. Today I had that many and a bunch of grammatical changes that one could make to words to make them into different words, like the suffix se-. It was a complicated grammar rule and I'm thinking I'll have to cover it again in the future, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting it.

The reading in the coursebook are getting harder, or maybe it was my lack of focus because of a serious amount of stress coming down from PSU. Either way, I think I'm gonna have to step up my game. I'm rewriting a couple of vocabulary cards to start getting things down a little better, however, the audio files are starting to make up for the lost times.

Remember rules number 1 and 2 and you can definitely do it. Good Luck.