Thursday, October 25, 2007

numbers ( 1 )

We use numbers in our conversations many times. We say it for telling times, ages, data, and other things in order to make our sentences completed with the important iformation. OK, let's start with the easiest first.
1 : satu
2: dua
3: tiga
4: empat
5: lima
6: enam
7: tujuh
8: delapan
9: sembilan
10: sepuluh

The next are 11 (sebelas), 12(dua belas), 13(tiga belas) etc until we come to 20, it's called dua puluh'. Then we put 21 (dua puluh satu), 22 (dua puluh dua) ....
After that we have 30 (tiga puluh), 40 (empat puluh)...finally we come to :
- 100 : seratus
-1000 : seribu
-1000000 : sejuta or satu juta
-1 000 000 000 : semilyar or satu milyar
If we want to ask about price, we ask'berapa harganya?'
usually the answer is 'harganya sepuluh ribu.
So how can you say 1.520.436 in Bahasa?

Monday, October 22, 2007

asking age

The next simple question that comes to our mind about our new friend is his age. In English we normally ask this question to someone,'how old are you?' ,in Bahasa Indonesia we use :
- berapa umurmu? for informal situation or
- berapa umur anda? for more polite function.
There are some other ways which has the same meaning :
- berapakah umur anda?
exactly the same with, umur berapa anda or umurmu berapa.
The answer can be, umurku tiga puluh (30) tahun or umur saya dua puluh lima (25)tahun.
For asking other people ages, we say,
- berapa umurnya for a singular subject
- berapa umur mereka for a plural subject
We can have the same answer,
- umurnya sekitar (about) lima puluh (50) tahun.

In Indonesia it's okey to ask a new person to us about his/her age. Usually they will anwer happily. Maybe it' different with the culture of other countries. What about the people in your country? Are they OK with that?

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Asking name

When we meet new person it is common we ask and introduce name. It is the simplest thing to identify our new partner. The easy way to ask name in Bahasa Indonesia is 'siapa namamu?' means 'what's your name?'. But it is only common between two people in informal situation, in more polite function we can say 'siapa nama anda?' ,anda means you in polite word.

We put a word for polite request as a beginning to our question like, 'permisi, siapa nama anda?.

If we want to ask a woman's or a man's name and in singular form we can ask :

'Siapa namanya?' or 'siapa nama dia?' because in Bahasa Indonesia it doesn't have possessive pronouns like 'his' or 'her' in English.

If we ask third party in plural form (they) we can use :

'siapa nama mereka?'

There are some ways to ask other people's names :

'siapa nama ayahmu' means 'what's your father's name?'

'siapa nama temanmu' means 'what's your friend's name?'

it's usual for a person when he is asked about his name and he answers, 'namaku Doni' or in more polite answer 'nama saya Doni'.

For a woman or a man's name the answer will be 'namanya Rudy' or 'namanya Wanda'.

Easy, right?

So, siapa namamu?