Monday, November 12, 2007

address (alamat)

Another question to a new person is about his address which must be in formal situation because we aren't close to each other. The common question is 'Anda tinggal dimana?' (where do you live) or 'Dimana rumah anda?' then his answer is 'saya tinggal di jalan Merpati Jakarta' or 'rumah saya di daerah kuningan'.

In other situation we can ask this way,'dimana alamatmu?' or 'rumah kamu dimana?'. For a singular person, we can use 'dimana rumahnya? or 'dimana rumah mereka' ( for plural ).
Generally the answer is 'alamatku di jalan Mawar nomer tiga'.

What if the address is about an office? Easy, you only have to ask 'dimana kantor anda?' and your partner's answer will be 'Kantor saya di Gedung Sejahtera (Sejahtera Building) lantai enam (6th floor) Jalan Ahmad Yani, Surabaya.'

Monday, November 05, 2007

numbers ( 2 )

OK, we've learned the simple way to mention numbers in Bahasa Indonesia, but there are some other functions of number to be used in daily conversation, like using it for telling time or in calculation. In Bahasa, we ask the time with the expression 'jam berapa sekarang? or 'sekarang jam berapa?'.
Normally the other person answers 'jam sepuluh'. If he wants to say 10.30, it's common for us to say 'sekarang jam setengah sepuluh'.
In Bahasa there is no such thing like a.m or p.m, but the Indonesian people just say it like ' jam dua belas malam' or 'jam satu siang'. it depens on the period of the day.

In caculation we usually use add, substract, times or divided by. In bahasa Indonesia, we can say with 'tambah' for add, 'kurang' for substract, 'kali' for times and 'dibagi' for divided by.
And we have 'sama dengan' for equals.
For example,
sepuluh tambah tiga belas sama dengan dua puluh tiga. (10 + 13 = 23 )
seratus dua puluh dibagi dua puluh empat sama dengan lima. ( 120 : 24 = 5 )
For 1/2 we say 'setengah'.
1/4 : seperempat
1/8 : seperdelapan
1/100 : seperseratus, etc.
Happy counting!