Free useful tool to improve your Indonesian.

[harryopal1]

Same as with the people who have 500 "friends" on F.B.
Of which 99% they never saw ...

A big difference, I think, between an individual AI chat "friend" and Facebook. The only time I open Facebook is if there is a post from someone I know personally. Facebook's daily recommendations for new "friends" is just ridiculous. I suppose for Facebook users collecting "Friends" provides some satisfacion a bit like collecting souvenir spoons.

 

[Balifrog]

A big difference, I think, between an individual AI chat "friend" and Facebook. The only time I open Facebook is if there is a post from someone I know personally. Facebook's daily recommendations for new "friends" is just ridiculous. I suppose for Facebook users collecting "Friends" provides some satisfacion a bit like collecting souvenir spoons.

I don't have FB, Instagram, Tiktok....

 

[fern.xx]

This morning an ABC report has a journalist writing about how she experimented with ChatGPT.com and using it as a counselling therapist. She was quite astonished by the results.

I had been using Gemini and found it rather limiting as a tool to help with Indonesian translations. This morning I opened ChatGPT.com and it shows terrific promise.

I asked could I use a name code at the start of each day so that there would be continuity in any discussion. And the answer, yes. So I can now begin with a simple name at the start of each day. Then I explained I am trying to learn Indonesian and could I write in Indonesian and have it reply in simple Bahasa Indonesian at the level of say a 10 year old. Yes, it does. Then I asked if I entered a post with mistakes in Indonesian, when it replied could it show me the sentence written correctly. And this it does . It also offered other extra lessons and examples.

To date, while I listen to daily Indonesian language news and other bits and pieces, I have little opportunity for practice. Shopping and such is simple and repetitious. My Indonesian wife finds it hard to speak Bahasa Indonesian slowly and prefers to speak English. So the ChatGPT will be very useful.

And of course you can basically ask it anything. Far superior to Gemini.

Two years in Yogya and I still get most of my Indonesian practice from the woman who sells nasi goreng at the end of my lane, which is something, I suppose, if not quite what I expected when I arrived.

I've been doing something similar with ChatGPT for a few months now (same setup, basically, write in Indonesian, have it reply simply, corrections flagged). It does work for that specific thing. The part I can't work out is whether it's actually transferring to anything outside of itself, because the Indonesian around me here is very Javanese-inflected and sounds nothing like what the AI gives back, which is clean and formal in a way that real conversation in this city just... isn't.

The household I work for speaks Dutch and English, so I'm in roughly the same position as you, structurally, where the language is all around me but somehow not actually available. ChatGPT fills that gap in some sense. Whether it's the right gap, I dont know.

The "simple and repetitious" shopping thing, yes. that's exactly where I've been stuck for over a year. :/

 

[harryopal1]

Two years in Yogya and I still get most of my Indonesian practice from the woman who sells nasi goreng at the end of my lane, which is something, I suppose, if not quite what I expected when I arrived.

I've been doing something similar with ChatGPT for a few months now (same setup, basically, write in Indonesian, have it reply simply, corrections flagged). It does work for that specific thing. The part I can't work out is whether it's actually transferring to anything outside of itself, because the Indonesian around me here is very Javanese-inflected and sounds nothing like what the AI gives back, which is clean and formal in a way that real conversation in this city just... isn't.

The household I work for speaks Dutch and English, so I'm in roughly the same position as you, structurally, where the language is all around me but somehow not actually available. ChatGPT fills that gap in some sense. Whether it's the right gap, I dont know.

The "simple and repetitious" shopping thing, yes. that's exactly where I've been stuck for over a year. :/

Fern, I find the following process helpful but it may or may not suit you. I use a laptop. If you open youtube and then put in he search "kisah nusantara" it brings up animated stories in Indonesian. At the bottom of the screen is a written version of each sentence as it is spoken. I then open another tab with google translate and slide that to the left side of the top icons. Open a Kisah nusantara video, pause it then click the windows icon and the right side arrow and it will place the video on the right side of the screen. I then place the cursor on the google translate at the top left of the screen and pull it across to the left side of the screen. If it opens as full screen then click on the window icon and a left arrow. You will then have a split screen with translate on the left and the kisah nusantara video on the right. As each sentence comes up, if I don't understand a word or sentence. I pause the video and then write the sentence into the translate screen I spend about an hour and a half each morning. It is still quite formal Indonesian but I find this gradually increasing my limited grasp of Bahasa. If you already have some fluency you could watch the whole story without pause to have the listening experience at conversational speed and then go back later to translate passages or words not understood. As I said, this may or may not be of use to you.

 

[jstar]

Whatever formal training and education, you will never learn a language when not speaking it with a native speaker. Immersion is everything. Seen so many people who thought they would learn BI, German, French, Mandarin and Dutch in courses or training and only got the theoretical basics and formal versions.

Try to understand a WA conversation or social media post in BI; no way with all these abbreviations. Example I recently received: “Qt jln jam brp?“. The qt does not mean quality time but kita (for we or ours). And then you get all the different dialects, street language and regional languages. And the lack of real rules (e.g. forget the whole active words theory ‘ber’ and ‘me’ you learned in your online class unless you want to give a formal speech).

 

[snpark]

So many times I get asked if i am boring

I don't think so. No. I'm quite interesting actually.

Did you mean bored?

 

[snpark]

Don't forget in the restaurant when they try to establish my ethnicity. Are you Finnish? No but I am Caucasian, from England, by the way I have completed my meal thankyou

Or my sexuality. Are you gay? No I am not gay but I am OK lol