Customer Reviews

Colloquial Indonesian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have to be fair and admit that I haven't spent the time with this book/tape set to do it justice. However, I found this book incredibly frustrating. That's because it seems no effort was made to present vocabulary in an orderly, controlled manner. They might use a word in Lesson 2 but not bother to list it as new vocabulary until Lesson 4. A dictionary is an absolute must to do any of the exercises. Also, not all the taped exercises are transcribed in the book, or at least it's not 100% clear how they correspond, so I keep finding words in those that I don't quite understand and can't look up. It's a so-so book/tape combo, but only so-so. I love to dabble in languages, and I've definitely seen better.

While I did find that this book was comprehensive in its introduction of useful, relevent vocabulary, and had a good audio companion, I found that some of the exercizes in the book lacked answer keys, making it occasionally frustrating. I would generally recommend it, but I would also recommend purchasing a companion volume that covers Indonesian grammar, and/or a good dictionary with a section devoted to it.

Colloquial Indonesian is a comprehensive textbook, logically arranged and easy to use. Each unit contains prose and/or conversational passages, grammar and plenty of exercises.

The Indonesian verb, with its system of affixations, is taught in a lucid and easily comprehensible manner. The book also contains a good 'Ready Reference Grammar'. When you finish this course (count on taking six months) you will have a thorough grounding in Bahasa Indonesia. I found the accompanying cassette tapes, which are recorded by native speakers, very useful.

I can find only one fault with the book - the author introduces a lot of vocabulary which is not to be found in the Indonesian-English glossary at the back, so you really need a dictionary to get the most out of it. Despite this, I enjoyed the course and often return to it for revision.

Lets start with whats good about this package;
You get two tapes,so there is enough listening material.
The grammar is clearly explained without difficulty.
The material covers good areas suited for a beginner.
The are many excercises to give you a thorough understanding of the grammar and sentense building.

Ok so why not 5 stars?
First of all; to my great irritation, when you come to certain dialogues at the middle/end of the chapter there are words and expressions which are not covered in the current chapter - it is explained in usually the following chapter.
Some words may occur in a dialogue, when searching through the chapter and previous ones and not finding it - you try to use the glossary at the end of the book, but there is nothing there. The so-called glossary is of very little use.
Another problem has to do with the pronounciation of 'e', which sometimes is pronounced like oe, sometimes 'e' as in pet.
In many other books on indonesian, words where 'e' is pronounced have markings such as a '`' above it (in most respectable dictionarys this is also used).
But in this one its not, with listening excercises its no problem but there are at least two extra dialogues in each chapter without listening tools so you don't know how to pronouce those words correctly.

But I consider these problems to be minor ones.
As long as you get an indonesian-english dictionary to find words and get the correct pronounciation of 'e', this course is very useful, mainly because of its very extensive excerices and tapes.
Just remember to get a dictionary where the different pronounciations of 'e' is clearly market out.

I borrowed the 2002 reprint from my local library, and it seems that they haven't bothered to correct any of the errors listed in the other reviews below since the first edition in 1994, so I'll not mention them again.

Despite this, it's still the best course I've come across so far. I have an Indonesian friend who was very impressed with my progress. Alreday after one month I was able to communicate fairly well with her in her native language. So I went through a new chapter every 2-3 days and reiterated the previous chapters before I started with a new chapter, so you might say that my learning curve was quite intense, but still, I'm impressed with how comprehensive the book is and and how many of life's everyday and no so everyday situations this book covers.

All dialogues and reading passages in this book are set in Indonesia, but funny enough, the section that deals with politics, demonstrations and government, takes place in London. Duh? Political correctness? Censorship?

Anyway, it's a very good course. I do recommend it despite it's flaws. After the first few chapters you'll be able to see through them and even know that what you think is correct, not what the typo says.

Well, I must agree with some of the earlier reviews. I bought the book and CDs to help me learn to speak some Indonesian before a trip to Bali. It's way too complicated and hard to follow for the average person and the CDs were a frustrating waste of time, at least for me. The CD would start with material from the book and then go off on stuff that I didn't understand because it did not follow the book material. I guess it would be fine for a formal course in a college setting, where you have the professor making the connections and you were doing tons of homework, but for the average person trying to get learn some language basics, I would not recommend it. And the book plus the CDs was a pricey
package. I found better lessons, easier to follow, and more useful on the web for free. Don't waste the money.

I have been traveling sporadically to Indonesia since 10 years ago. I tried many books to learn a basic Indonesian and I can tell you this is the best one with a great difference over the rest. It is very well organized and drives you from very easy concepts up to the most complicated following a very smooth path.

There are enough positive features about this course to make it worth the cost. However, there are also enough flaws in its organization to make unnecessary work and frustration for a beginning student and also to lower its score.

The vocabulary offered is interesting and useful, and the dialogues offer a good entree into conversation on a wide variety of areas. The most daunting aspect of Indonesian grammar is the verb with its complex system of affixes, but the author presents it clearly and in any case, it's far from being the most difficult system to master. The problem- as other reviewers have also pointed out- is that the exercises do not track the material in the lessons well and words are put in before being defined (some are not glossed at all) and grammatical constructions are used in the lessons before they are introduced and explained. Perseverance, not to mention a good dictionary, will help overcome all this, but a more thorough proofreading and editing would have prevented the sense of gear grinding I sometimes got as I worked my way through it.

i am more interested in gaining feedback than writing an actual review, at the same time i will try to provide what little info i can on this book ( since i haven't read covered all of it) the last indonesian book i had was teach yourself indonesian, which was outdated to say the least, at least this book seems to have more realistic dialog, although the vocabulary in the back isnt that large. my real concern is bahasa prokem or bahasa gaul 'indonesian slang' if there is any native speaker or fluent speaker who can tell me how much this figures into learning the language, it would be appreciated, i have heard indonesian slang has really infiltrated the language and that learning standard indo isnt really useful?? there are some really big differences, i know a little of the slang, but i dont think that getting a good base in the language can hurt anything, is bahasa gaul really that pervasive in indonesia, how relevant is it to learning the language, any feedback would be appreciated, thank you!