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.'

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!

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?

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?

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?

salam

The first thing we normally say to start the conversation is saying greetings. We say ;hi, hello and the similar things to greet someone. In more formal situation people use 'good morning, afternoon, etc. Bahasa Indonesia has the same system. For friends, we use 'hai' or 'halo' but for more polite function we say depend on the time, in the morning we say "selamat pagi, in the afternoon we say 'selamat siang' and in the evening we use 'selamat malam'. Actually the word 'selamat' can be used for some occasions such as :
- selamat jalan for a leavetaking person
- selamat tinggal which means good bye
- selamat ulang tahun for happy birthday
- selamat natal for merry Xmas
So I guess you know the meaning of 'selamat tahun baru'....

Apa kabar

apa kabar?
This is a common expression for two people that know each other and they don't meet for some time. This is not an expression for new people for us. In English, we usually say 'how are you'. Apa kabar is usually used for asking health and condition of another speaker and the other person will say ,'Baik' or 'Kabar baik'.
Bahasa Indonesia is sometimes mixed with other language for example Arabic, because it is related to the Indonesian' religion. So it is common that people in Indonesia will respond 'Alhamdulillah saya baik-baik saja' which means 'thank God I'm very well'.
Instead of 'apa kabar' we can say 'bagaimana kabarmu' and we can give the same respons as above.
If we want to know about other person condition we can say 'bagaimana kabar Susan' for example or 'bagaimana kabar keluargamu' ,you know keluarga is family.
The answer can be 'mereka baik-baik saja or they're just fine.
So, apa kabarmu dan keluargamu ?