Selamat Pagi!
As you know, language is a a unique product of culture. On the other hand, contrastive analysis is a way of contrasting and comparing two languages, which means we try to find not only the differences, but also the similarities between both languages.
You have learned Indonesian to English Grammar. However, comparison between two languages is beyond grammar. Therefore, before we move this contrastive analysis between English and Indonesian Languages, you should check these following articles.
Phonotactics Principle
Phonotactics is derived from the words ‘phone’ and ‘tactics’. It is the way of merging and forming sounds as well as determining the phones (and alphabets) order, which each language has its own. On the other word, you could identify a word belong to certain language by only their alphabets and sounds order.
Even though both Bahasa Indonesian and English has same type of alphabets (Latin) as well as similar Phonetics, but in terms of phonotactics, things are different. While you would find ‘ba’ or ‘pr’ on both languages, but you would not find ‘thr’ like in ‘through’, ‘rch’ in March or ‘consonant + s’ like ‘books’ in Bahasa Indonesia.
In contrast, you would not find ‘ng’ [ŋ] as the first sounds like in ‘nguping’ and ‘ny’ [ñ] like in ‘nyanyi’ in English.
Check also : Indonesian Phonemes, Consonant Phonemes in English and Indonesian, and Indonesian Alphabets
1. Indonesian Verb
Both Bahasa Indonesia and English, has similar components of part of speech (Subject, Verbs, Objects, Adverb). But, the main and significant difference of it is about verbs. While Bahasa Indonesia familiar with Transitive Verbs and Intransitive Verbs, in English we know regular and irregular verbs.
Furthermore, although both know about affixation, the affix has more variation and significant functions in Bahasa Indonesia.
Bahasa Indonesia
- to determine a word as active/passive
Example:
– Susi memukul Dani (Susi punched Dani) – active
– Dani dipukul Susi (Dani was punched by Susi) = passive - determine the need of an object (transitive/intransitive)
Example:
– Ani main (Ani plays) – intransitive
– Ani memainkan bola (Ani plays the ball – transitive
– Ani bermain (Ani plays) – intransitive - to determine subjects and objects position
- to form nouns, adjective, verbs as well as adverbs
- there is Indonesian Infixes (-el in ‘telunjuk’, er in ‘gerigih’)
Learn more in Indonesian Prefixes, Indonesian Prefixes and Suffixes
- English
– to form nouns, adjective, verbs as well as adverbs
– depends on the Subject (in present simple) and time (later)
2. Indonesian Tenses (Main Factor)
Have you ever heard? There is no tenses in Bahasa Indonesia. It could be right because we do not pay much attention to the time. As you know, English has 16 tenses while Bahasa Indonesia is only one.
Therefore, it is hard to imagine the time bound difference between past tense, past perfect, past continuous and many more while in Bahasa Indonesia adding an adverb such as ‘yesterday’ or ‘will’ without changing its verb. Maybe it is the reason why Western people is really on time because the time becomes the main factor to determine the tense. Take a look!
- Paman datang (Uncle is coming) – present tense
Kemarin paman datang (Yesterday, uncle came) – past tense
Notice the difference?
Even though both have very huge difference in tenses, it is not happened in sentence structure. Unlike tenses, both ‘agree’ with the basic structure of S-V (Subjek-Predikat in Bahasa Indonesia). Therefore, learning Indonesian structure is easier for English speaker than reverse (because Indonesian struggle with grammar structure caused by different tenses)
3 Indonesian Gender Words
After contrastive analysis about technical factor, we could also compare both language in more cultural perspective. While having its own culture, both languages shows gender perspective through it words.
It means even though they both different, there are several words that show the way people see man and woman, even sometimes sexist perspective of both sexes (and also other genders).
Here are several words that has gender relation.
Bahasa Indonesia
- pelakor (husband theft)
- perawan tua (old virgin woman) *there is no perjaka tua (old virgin man)
- siswa/siswi (male student/female student)
- karyawan/karyawati (male staff/female staff)
- janda/duda (widow/widower)
- jalang (bitch)
- wanita (woman) tuna susila (female prostitute) *there is no pria (man) tuna susila (male prostitute)
- waria (man woman)
- pelacur/gigolo (female prostitute/woman prostitute)
English
- motherf*cker
- b*tch
- he/she (he/she is translated as ‘dia’ in Bahasa Indonesia)
- brother/sister (in Bahasa Indonesia, sibling is divided as kakak [older sibling] and adik [younger sibling]
- womanizer
Check : Indonesian Bad Words and Indonesian Cultural Words
Those are Contrastive Analysis Between English and Indonesian Language. I hope you are now more familiar with Bahasa Indonesia, both technically and culturally as well as become more curious about it. Here are articles to know more about the uniqueness of Bahasa Indonesia
- Differences between English and Bahasa Indonesia
- ‘Kita’ and ‘Kami’ in Bahasa Indonesia
- What’s the Difference between ‘Anda’ and ‘Kamu’ In Indonesian?
- Formal Pronouns
Good luck and break a leg!