Yang seems to be the hardest word

A read of any Indonesian text will reveal that it's liberally sprinkled with the word "yang". My Indonesian - English dictionary helpfully describes this little word as a "nominalising particle" [I thought that was what they were looking for at CERN?], or "particle forming a specific adjective clause".

I kind of get the first one. "I want the blue one" would translate to "Saya mau yang biru" - "I want the one which is blue". The "specific adjective clause" is causing more problems. In "Saya tinggal di rumah yang kecil" - "I live in the house which is small" - the yang seems fairly redundant. My learning strategy at the moment seems to be to drop in a few yangs before random adjectives and see what the teacher says. Perhaps all will become clear - and if not I'll just stop using it.

Specific adjective clauses aside, the language is all pretty logical. You can construct a verb from any adjective or noun with appropriate suffixes and prefixes. This can lead to some very long words ("mengumpul-satukan" is over 3 times longer than its English translation, "unite"), but it helps that you can see the root within a word and so work out what it means.

The record so far for Indonesian-English letters ratio is "seorang", 7 letters needed to communicate the English word "a". I may need a new laptop keyboard before my two years is out.




















A hard day at the office