Indonesian for Beginners: Learning Conversational Indonesian (With Free Online Audio)

I just started reading the book (on lesson 1) and it seems very informative so far. I like how there is a basic grammar overview at the beginning and how each lesson has a theme. The first theme is related to Chinese New Years and includes a lot of useful vocabulary good for basic conversations. After skimming thru the book, I like how there were illustrations and exercises included in each lesson. There also appears to be some online material but I haven't tried it yet. So far it seems like a good book for beginners like me.

Trying to learn a new language later in life is hard but this book is making it easier. I surprised my Indonesian friend with a few sentences the other day and I didn’t mess up.

Perfect

This book is for a specific style of learning. If you are able to memorize vocabulary easily and are able to find yourself focused on a 'narrative' of a language book, I'd recommend this book to you. It's directed more to high-schoolers who are just doing this as a free-time sort-of task. But if you learn easier through 'classroom supplementary' style language books, I wouldn't recommend this book to you. The vocab is listed as you go through a chapter, and the grammar is mixed in with the other tid-bits of the book (culture, dialogue, exercises). While studying Japanese in the past, I have used Genki as my main recourse, and I can say that this isn't much of an equivalent for Bahasa Indonesia.

Overall has a good explanation of basic vocabulary and a good basic overview in the beginning. However my main complaint is that the vocabulary lists are organized alphabetically not by subject so its hard to figure out your methodology for memorizing all of them. For example it would make more sense to have all the animals grouped so that when you memorize you memorize animals and then all the pronouns grouped and so on but with it alphabetical those terms are spread out in like a 100 term list. Tempted to give 3 stars but grammar explanations are good.

This is a good starter book for the study of the Indonesian language. It is aesthetically pleasing and presents the material in a clear and interesting way. It leans heavily toward culture, which I found enjoyable until I'd finished Unit 9 of 12. Then I became weary of it. In addition, I find no need to learn verbs that translate to 1) sacrificing an animal and 2) spilling blood, which are part of the cultural contribution. I'd rather learn more practical verbs--verbs one would use in normal conversation. Yes, there's an Indonesian-English glossary, but it doesn't contain all the Indonesian words introduced. You still need a dictionary, though you'd probably want to have one anyway. The audio is useful; however, it has the usual problem of native speakers talking too fast for a beginning learner to follow them, much less comprehend what they're saying. Something I really like is the inclusion of Indonesian songs. Music in itself is lovely and it makes lyrics easy to remember. Now I've moved on to Basic Indonesian, which is considerably more comprehensive. My gratitude goes to Tuttle Publishing for providing me with answer keys to both works.

This book is not very well executed. There are many cases where they say they're going to discuss a topic and never mention it again, talk about unrelated information together under the same heading, or make you go searching through the reference pages. Even my Indonesian tutor gets confused by this book. On top of that, there are not enough practice and review exercises. Each grammar point has only about 5 or so practice questions, which isn't enough to really test your knowledge. It would be nice if they had a workbook to accompany the textbook.

Libro didattico da inglese ad indonesiano. Complice la relativa semplicità della lingua e della sua pronuncia per gli italiani è stato sufficiente lo studio del libro per riuscire in pochi mesi a padroneggiare la lingua in modo da poter interagire con la popolazione indonesiana. Interessante perché alla grammatica alterna articoli da cui è possibile capire la cultura del popolo indonesiano. Eccezionale!

I recommend this textbook for learners of Indonesian. The content is great; it is useful, interesting and easy to understand. The book also includes cultural segments. This book appeals to all learning styles. If a sequel was created for intermediate and advanced learners, I would quickly purchase them.

Nice book

Un libro excelente para aprender sobre la cultura y la gramatica de Indonesia

A good way to supplement your learning. It doesn't seem that hard for a beginner and Indonesian is already one of the easiest languages to learn. Worth it.