Learning Those Crazy Languages

I started tutoring an aspiring PhD student on the IELTS exam. It's been going pretty well so far, and I think we'll be good friends. Last night we discovered a pronunciation difficulty with his "th" sound, as in "three", which sounds identical to the way he says "tree".  He also has this fascinating tendency to create a fricative "g" sound in the word "great", almost as if he's speaking Dutch.

After reflecting on last night, and in trying to develop the next lesson plan, I realized how excited I get about language and linguistics. Last year, under the instruction of a Chinese exchange student and friend, I learned basic pronunciation for vowels and consonants in Mandarin. No kidding, it was not easy. Can't believe how many times I had to repeat zi, ci, si and zhi, chi, shi before getting them right. And even after my tutor was satisfied, I still couldn't distinguish the subtle differences I'd made with my tongue and mouth! It was strange, and it made me empathize all the more with students who have such a difficult time with English.

As for Bahasa Indonesia, pronunciation is pretty straightforward and arguably easier than mainland SE Asian languages since it doesn't deal with tones. (I'm guessing it also has fewer phonemes, though I need a proper source to confirm this.) On a personal level, I can relate more to Indonesian because it sounds very similar to Tagalog, a language I grew up hearing. This makes sense since both stem from the Austronesian language family.

The main problem I have when trying to speak Indonesian at a confident pace is that I sometimes jumble up my words. When you're dealing with five or more syllables and a funny combination of vowels and consonants, it can get kind of tricky. Here are a few fun examples:

1. dikedepankan = emphasized (passive)
2. mengambinghitamkan = to make someone the scapegoat
3. dipindahtangankan = transferred (passive).
4. memasyarakatkan = to popularize, to promote
5. membudidayakan = to cultivate

In fact, these are all verbs in passive (di-) and active (me-) forms, so if you can break them down and understand the root words, they start making sense and are way easier to say.

In the first word, "ke depan" means "to the front".
In the second word, "kambing" means "goat" and "hitam" means "black". Interesting...
In the third word, "pindah" means "to move (somewhere else)" and "tangan" means "hand".
In the fourth word, "masyarakat" means "community."
In the fifth word,  "budidaya" means "cultivation".

Of course these are rather formal words, and there are informal ways to say the same thing. But it's pretty cool when it all starts to click.