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.