Learn about the common mistakes people make when pronouncing Indonesian
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Fira: Halo! Nama saya Fira. |
| Gina: And I’m Gina! Welcome back to IndonesianPod101.com! This is Pronunciation Lesson 5, Common Indonesian Pronunciation Mistakes. In this lesson, we’ll be going over the top five pronunciation mistakes in Indonesian. |
Lesson focus |
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| Fira: Yes, and it’s important that you, our listeners, are familiar with them, so that you can minimize them when you speak. |
| Gina: Definitely! What’s our first one? |
| Fira: Tip number one is remember to trill your "-R's!" |
| Gina: Remember that in Indonesian, the letter "-R" is not pronounced the same way as in English. |
| Fira: Yeah, that’s right – you don’t want to end up sticking out like a sore thumb. |
| Gina: And one of the ways that people can detect a foreign accent over the phone, is by the way you pronounce this particular sound. |
| Fira: For example, if you want some rice, you ask for "beras." "Beras." With a trilled "-r." If you ask for "brass" with an English-like "-r," who knows what you’ll get? |
| Gina: (Laughter) Ok, so what’s our next pronunciation tip? |
| Fira: Tip number 2 is - don’t aspirate! |
| Gina: Right – in the first lesson of this pronunciation series, we said that the letters "-c," "-k," "-p," and "-t" were pronounced slightly differently to their corresponding sounds in English. And this is because of aspiration. When you read these characters in Indonesian, we recommend you grab a piece a paper, and hold it loosely about four inches from your mouth. |
| Fira: Then, you should get a list of things to read that has plenty of "-k's," "-p's," "-t's," and "-c's." |
| Gina: Yes and you can see the breath moving the piece of paper! That’s a good tip! So what’s the next one? |
| Fira: Tip number 3 - Don’t forget your glottal stop! |
| Gina: There are two cases where you need to make a glottal stop in Indonesian. |
| Fira: The first one is when you have a "-k" at the end of the word. For example, the word "anak" which means [child]. [A-nak]. "Anak." You can hear the glottal stop at the end. |
| Gina: And the second case is...? |
| Fira: Wherever you have two identical vowels right next to each other, you have to make a glottal stop. |
| Gina: Can you give us an example? |
| Fira: For example, the word "saat," which means "moment." [Sa-at]. "Saat." It has the glottal stop. Another good one is the word for "sorry" (ma-af.) "Maaf." [Ma-af]. "Maaf." |
| Gina: Okay, what’s the next tip? |
| Fira: Tip number 4 - learn to be comfortable with your velar nasal consonant now! |
| Gina: Remember that Indonesian has many sounds that are similar to English, so there aren’t too many challenging sounds – except for one – the velar nasal spelled "-n-g.” |
| Fira: Don’t you have this in English, though? Like in the word "sing?" |
| Gina: Yes, we do – but notice that "-ng" is always in the middle or at the end of words in English. It’s never at the beginning of the word. In Indonesian, there are a number of words that have this particular sound at the beginning! |
| Fira: Yeah, for example, the informal way of saying "understand" is "ngerti." [Nger-ti]. "Ngerti." It’s not an "-n." sound. And it’s not an "-n" plus "-g" sound – it’s the sound at the end of "sing" put at the beginning. |
| Gina: Can you give us another example? |
| Fira: The informal way to say "to send" is "ngirim." "Ngi-rim." "Ngirim." |
| Gina: You might notice the consonant at the beginning of the word. Listen carefully listeners, because I’m about to give you a pronunciation tip that is sure to help you! Imagine the word "sing" – and immediately lop off the "-s" and "-i", so that you get the final consonant in isolation – "-ng." What’s next, fira? |
| Fira: At that point, once you feel comfortable, you can put various vowels after the "-ng". And then practice pronouncing those syllables, like /ng-a/, /ng-i/, /ng-u/, /ng-e, /ng-o/, and so on. |
| Gina: That’s a pretty good strategy, Fira! |
| Fira: If you keep at this, velar nasals won’t scare you anymore! |
| Gina: Okay, now what’s the last tip we have for everyone? |
| Fira: Tip number 5 -watch out for similar-sounding words! |
| Gina: This could happen in any language, but Indonesian has a smaller number of sounds than English, let’s say. This means that there are many words that sound really similar - and the difference is only one syllable, or something like that. And when you’re starting out and still have a small vocabulary, it becomes even easier to mix words up. What are some more infamous examples? |
| Fira: One example is "pak" and "bak." |
| Gina: They sound really similar…so what do they mean? |
| Fira: "Pak" with a "-p" means "father" – what you would call most middle-aged men or fathers. Sort of like "mister," but much more personal. "Bak" with a "-b" means a "water basin." |
| Gina: Yeah! You have to be careful with this one. You wouldn’t want to try and call a nice gentleman a water basin! |
| Fira: (laughs) Yeah, that would be very awkward! |
| Gina: How about another example? |
| Fira: Here’s a triple bonanza! "Boleh," "bola," and "bule!" |
| Gina: Wow, what do those mean? |
| Fira: "Boleh" means "may," or "go ahead," as we learned in an earlier lesson. "Bola" means "ball." Now, the third word is one you want to be a little careful about, because some people could be offended by it. But it's important to know because you may hear it in Indonesia. It’s "Bule," a casual slang term for a "white person" that is often used to describe foreigners in general. |
| Gina: So be careful not to get those mixed up! All right, well those are our top 5 tips for avoiding pronunciation mistakes in Indonesian! |
| Fira: Remember to keep practicing, listeners! |
| Gina: We can’t stress this enough. Listening and repeating is the quickest way to get these sounds down. |
Outro |
| Gina: Alright listeners, that’s all for this lesson, and for this series. |
| Fira: As always, to see more explanations and examples from this lesson, please check out the lesson notes! |
| Gina: We hope you enjoyed this series and found it useful, and we’ll see you in another series. Thanks for listening, bye! |
| Fira: Sampai jumpa. |
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