Indonesian easy or difficult?

Indonesian easy or difficult?

I refer to the two interesting letters this month about
whether or not Indonesian is an easy-to-learn language. I have
lived here for a total of about 10 years (in three stints) and
felt like writing about my experience.

If you are not in Jakarta, you learn Indonesian in no time
because there is no alternative. Very few people can speak
English even in other big cities like Surabaya or Semarang. So
you either learn it or depend on an interpreter (and hope that
he/she is really translating correctly what you are
saying/hearing) or you return to your home ground.

In Jakarta, you don't have to learn Indonesian because a
reasonably big proportion of Jakartans know English. Quite a few
of them, in fact, prefer to polish their English by speaking to
English-speaking foreigners.

Indonesian is one of the simplest languages as long as your
objective is its "working knowledge" because (a) It uses Roman
script, (b) It is not necessary to remember singular-plural
forms, (c) Construction of sentences in active voice as well as
passive voice is very simple. In fact you don't even need to use
oleh in the passive construction, (d) You do not need to mug up
the PPPs like you need to do in English, as in leave-left,
deliver-delivered, speak-spoken, etc., (e) The verb does not
change according to the subject (singular, plural, masculine,
feminine etc.) or the tense of the sentence. In fact in how many
languages would a word for both an elder brother and an elder
sister be the same (like kakak in Indonesian)?

But there the simplicity ends. When you meet ke...an, pe...an,
per...an etc., the meanings change in a major way. The vocabulary
of Indonesian is as big and as difficult to remember as that of
any other language. Of course the most difficult part in
Indonesian is how to use the dictionary, because you have to
learn to locate the root word first.

Although there are exceptions to prove the rule, I have
generally seen that people who are born in countries where only
English is spoken are used to others learning their language and
therefore they hardly use their in-born faculty of learning
additional languages and eventually lose it. Remember Darwin's
law?

On the other hand, Indians who (like me) have to learn at
least three languages (and sometimes end up learning four or
five), have no hassles in learning the language of the state or
country where they work and do so in a jiffy. In fact, I often
feel that Indians are born with an additional language
proficiency "genetic ship."

But I agree with the views expressed by the author of the
first letter. I feel that living in Indonesia and not learning
Indonesian borders on being impolite to the nice and polite
Indonesians. In two of my three jobs, I have given friendly
lessons in elementary Indonesian to my fellow expatriates (In the
third, I was the only expatriate) and wouldn't mind doing it
again. I have seen that it improves my English ...!

K.B. KALE

Jakarta