Chapter 3: Name of Days in a Week

Now we are studying names of days in a week. The names in Indonesian are from Arabic.

Ahad or Minggu: Sunday
Senin: Monday
Selasa: Tuesday
Rabu: Wednesday
Kamis: Thursday
Jum’at: Friday
Sabtu: Saturday

Besides meaning Sunday, minggu also means “week”.

Hari apa hari ini?: What day is today?
Hari ini hari Minggu. Today is Sunday
Hari apa kemarin? What day was yesterday?
Kemarin hari Sabtu. Yesterday was Saturday.

In Indonesia we do not have tenses like will be discussed in the next chapter.

Chapter 2: Greetings

Here are greetings which are commoly used in Indonesia.

1. Selamat pagi: good morning
2. Selamat siang: good day
3. Selamat sore: good afternoon
4. Selamat malam: good evening
5. Selamat tidur: good night
6. Selamat datang: welcome
7. Selamat tinggal: good bye
8. Selamat makan: have a nice meal
9. Apa kabar? Who are you?
10. Saya baik. I am fine.

Selamat means “safe”. Moreover, if you want to make a new greeting, just add “selamat” in front of the word that you want to say. For example: have a nice trip: selamat jalan-jalan.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Almost every Indonesian speaks Indonesian. It means that it is spoken by almost 200 billion people. For most of them, the language is not their mothertongue. Amazingly, there are more than 400 languages exisit in this archipelago. Indonesians speak at least one local language and Indonesian as the national language. Besides, Indonesian and Malaysian are similar. They originate from Malay. For more detailed information on the language, read “Indonesian Language” at Wikipedia.

Afterwards, to learn Indonesian I recommend you to have an English-Indonesian dictionary and vice versa. The dictionary can be downloaded at download.com with the key word “Kamus”.