David Goldsworthy's Blog

• To think 'English as global lingua franca is enough' is a catastrophic mistake 8 months ago In a broadcast on ABC Radio National on Saturday, Sept 8, Kishore Mahbubani, Professor in the Practice of Public Policy and Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, made the following points in relation to Australian attitudes towards our place in Asia...
• Indonesian is one of the most difficult languages to learn II 9 months ago Following on from my previous post, which I should add was a response to a comment made on a forum that Indonesian is an easy language to learn, the following is a second response to add more clarification to my initial point:My point is, it's the difference between the vagueness of Indonesian (I...
• Indonesian is one of the most difficult languages to learn 10 months ago Indonesian is one of the most difficult languages to learn. The grammar may be comparatively easy compared with English, but the socio-linguistics is a different matter altogether. Indonesian is what is sometimes termed a 'high-context'' language. In overly-simple terms, this means that, in spoken...
• Titip Dong! 10 months ago The word 'titip' is an important one in Indonesia.It plays a very useful role in the way Indonesians relate to each other. The baggage that goes with it ranges from positive to negative (depending on your perspective, of course).Essentially, titip means to ask someone to attend to something or look...
• Pertama atau Kesatu 11 months ago Ordinal numbers in Indonesian are signified by the prefix ke~ before the number. For example:First = Kesatu1st = Ke-1Second = Kedua2nd = Ke-2Third = Ketiga3rd = Ke-3...and so on.I have often heard or read that for 1st / First, you should never use ‘ke-1/ kesatu; you must use the word...

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