Fluent Indonesian in 3 months in Australia

Image by Nicolas Raymond

Since 2010, I have been 'studying' Indonesian and have gotten A's on my reports, assignments and tests. But I still can't speak it fluently. Around August 2012, I started 'learning' Indonesian; speaking it on Skype, learning vocabulary on Memrise1 and other resources outside of the classroom. 

For the last couple of years, I have been reading Benny Lewis' blog 'Fluent in 3 months'2 and learnt some key points about languages such as:

• 'Fluent in 3 Months' is not a guarantee, but a challenge.
• You are more likely to succeed in the challenge if you tell a large number of people about it. (I did announce on FaceBook that my new year's resolution is to be fluent in Indonesian)
• Your target language should be part of your daily schedule. (I am working out how to balance assignments with learning Indonesian)
• You learn more from speaking that writing. (Indonesian uses a phonetic Latin alphabet, so each word is written how you speak it)
• Whether you were good at languages at school or not is irrelevant: your commitment is. (I did have the advantage of very enthusiastic teachers who focused on speaking) 
• You don't need to be in the country to become fluent. (He learnt Egyptian Arabic in Brazil)
• All languages are hard, with the exception of Esperanto for some people. 

Image by zsoolt

Volunteering at Wycliffe

Two weeks ago, I volunteered at Wycliffe's national centre in Kangaroo Grounds. Wycliffe is a non-government organisation which translates the Bible into languages that have no written Bible. 

Wycliffe was founded by an American named Cameron Townsend in 1934 after a mission trip to Guatemala where a native Guatemalan man asked him "Why doesn't your God speak my language?" when he was distributing Spanish Bibles. He named the organisation after John Wycliffe, who translated the Bible from Latin to Old English in 1382. Priests and other members of the Catholic Church at that time, thought he was starting a cult. 

Figures about languages in relation to the Bible (2013):

Section                                Number of languages

Complete Bible                  around* 518

New Testament (only)       around 1275

Some scripture                   around 1005

Currently in progress         around 2075

None                                    around 1967

Altogether, there are around 6877 living languages. *Around because linguists have discovered some languages are dialects and vice vera. 

Day 1. 
When I first arrived, I had an open mind, and didn't know what to expect. I was taught the basic history of Wycliffe; what its goal is and about EQUIP training. Later that day, I did a basic language class which included learning to pronounce different sounds in the international phonetic alphabet (such as clicks, the Indonesian 'p' sound as well as the 't' and 'd' sounds found in Indian languages), doing language puzzles and a language understanding game, where I was taught the names of objects in a language (in this case, Northern Tanna) but not allowed to verbalise the name. Then, I had to  show my understanding by picking up the object the teacher called out. At the end of the day, I helped set up a conference room and set out towels, soaps and letters in the guest lodges. 

There was a heavy fog on the morning that I arrived at Wycliffe National Centre

Wycliffe and EQUIP national centre

Where in the world?

This week I decided to give you (my blog readers) a challenge. I posted 3 pictures of the same city in the world and I would like you to write your guess what city it is in the comment section or in an email to me (if you know my email address). The answer will be revealed within the next 2 weeks as well as URL of the photos (for copyright reasons) as I have not taken these photos and they are creative commons on flickr. (Though, I would like to travel to that city and take photos like this). 

Good Luck guessing!

(Please email, facebook, tweet, text message or message in a bottle with this post's link to all your friends, if you like this post)