Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.
Hello! This is “Indonesia di Sekitarmu” from BasaBasa Learning Centre. My name is Indy and my name is Dona and we will assist you in learning Indonesian today.
For today’s episode, we would like to start our podcast by bringing you good news: after about three years of full effort in dealing with the covid-19 outbreak back in 2020, Indonesia is now progressively recovering and growing stronger. This fact is evident from various aspects. To name a few, we can see schools and universities are being reopened, people are going back to work at office after a while doing the work from home, and, this might be the most favorite thing for everyone, that the tourism industry has started to go back on track.
Reported by Indonesia’s Central Statistical Agency, there was a 10,000 percent increase of foreign tourist arrival in Indonesia last year, from around 5,000 tourists in 2021 to 530,000 in September 2022. This is very wonderful news for everyone. We believe everyone is now bringing their spirit back to enjoy traveling to long-desired destinations.
For any of you considering visiting Indonesia, there are different ways of having fun interaction with local Indonesians, one of which is to have basic conversation. For this special episode, we are gonna be talking about common questions that locals ask to foreigners. This might be a helpful keystone of engaging with local Indonesians and might spice up your trip here! Now, without further ado, let’s get into it!
Some Indonesians can actually speak English, especially young people. However, it is only a small proportion out of the whole population and Indonesians are very interested in foreigners coming to the country. Because of the language barrier, Indonesians would love and highly respect foreigners that are able to speak their language and they would regard you as their close friends! To have this fun time exchanging conversation with locals, here are some examples of questions that foreigners get from the locals and their typical answers!
- Locals will firstly greet you by the time you meet them by saying ‘Apa kabar?’
This phrase actually means ‘How are you?’ in English. To answer this question, you can simply answer, ‘Saya baik’, which means ‘I am fine’. Don’t forget to throw a smile whenever you meet locals and get asked by this type of question. You can certainly use this type of question to the locals and they will happily respond to you! - Locals like to ask your name
Locals will ask you, “Siapa namamu?”, which actually means ‘What is your name?’. To answer this question, you can politely say: ‘Nama saya ….’. You can actually spot similarities between Indonesian and English language here, ‘Nama’ means ‘Name’ in English. Easy, right? - Locals like to ask your origin
When locals are interested to listen to your origin story, they will simply ask: ‘Dari mana asalmu?’ which translates to English as ‘Where do you come from?’ If you get asked this question, you can simply answer by mentioning your home country or your hometown even using this phrase: ‘Saya berasal dari ….’, which means ‘I come from ….’ . Some Indonesians are familiar with some cities overseas and they are very glad you can share your personal origin story with them. - Locals ask about personal question
This is the most interesting part of Indonesian culture. It might be a very personal question that we normally do not share with someone we do not really know of, but local Indonesians would ask this personal question to foreigners, such as Berapa umurmu?, meaning How old are you? And sometimes they also ask Sudah menikah? or in English it translates to Are you married? Actually, locals asking these types of questions do not necessarily regard this as a personal question and don’t mean to be rude; they actually think it as a way to know more about you. To answer these questions, you can answer your current age for the former questions, and you can simply say yes or no for the later. - Locals’ curiosity of your favorite Indonesian food
Funnily enough, locals will ask about local food you might like. There are a lot of varieties of food here in Indonesia, from street food, traditional food, and a lot more. Locals will use this phrase: Apa makanan favoritmu? Meaning, What is your favorite food? And you can simply answer: Saya suka nasi goreng, which translates to English as I like fried rice. Very simple, right?
To recap, those are some questions that foreigners commonly get asked from the locals. We have learned about how locals will ask about your current condition, your name, your origin, your favorite food, even some of your personal information. It must be understood that these questions work as a way for locals to get to know about you because they are very happy to welcome you for coming to the country. You can also ask the same type of questions to the locals you talk to to have a more natural and fun conversation.
I’m pretty sure you learn more and more Indonesian everyday. As the time is up, We’re looking forward to seeing you again soon in another episode. Stay tuned on basabasa.id.
Good bye for now!
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