Indonesian not so easy

I did not see the Sunday Jakarta Post, so therefore did not see GS Edwin's article, which Ben Dowson thoroughly agreed with in his letter Disinterested or lazy (March 12). I think Dowson makes rather too sweeping a generalization when he claims that anyone who cannot pick up Indonesian in six months must be "half- witted, lazy or plain disinterested".

As one who is almost certainly old enough to be the grandfather of these two (presumably) young men, I would like to say that none of these pejorative adjectives applies to me. After many years in this country, I confess that my knowledge of the language is still minimal, but not for any of the reasons that Dowson adduces. Half-witted I am not; I hold a responsible job in a very high-flying firm. Lazy, I am not, because I work very hard, and have done so all my time in Indonesia. Disinterested, I certainly am not -- I am married to a delightful Indonesian, and I work with cultured and intelligent Indonesians. I am also on very friendly terms with my neighbors in our kampong, so I am not one of the arrogant types Dowson mentions. As for luxurious mansions and limousines, I live in a modest house, built to my own requirements, and my means of transport is an equally modest Kijang.

It is not for want of trying that I am not fluent in Indonesian, which I would dearly love to be. This is particularly frustrating for me, since in my younger days I was something of a linguist. Fortunately I was a classical scholar at one of England's leading schools and at Magdalen College, Oxford. Latin and Greek, at both of which I was highly proficient, are the best foundations on which to build a knowledge of language, English included.

The result is that I can still get along very well in French, with basic German, Spanish, Italian and Norwegian. But Indonesian, apart from the words borrowed from European languages, has nothing syntactically, grammatically or verbally in common with western languages, which would make learning easier for somebody like me.

Dowson and Edwin might also find difficulty in learning a new language when they are older. Indonesian, as I well know, is a simple language to learn if one can remember a few basic rules and a couple of thousands words. It's all a question of memory, and memory becomes fallible as one grows older, as both these gentlemen will find out if they ever make it past three score years and 10.

JAMES RICHARDS

Jakarta