[duffyjp]

I was there ~20 years ago. I had made friends with some Indonesia students in college and joined them on a trip home. We were mostly in Surabaya, but did spend some time in Jakarta as well. We had a great time.

The language is a hidden gem, you can learn enough to get around on the flight over which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a million loan words you already know.

Jakarta is definitely for the adventurous though, and you had better have an iron stomach.

[asmosoinio]

> ...which I can't say about any other SEA language. Phonetic spellings, Latin alphabet, no tonal sounds, dead easy grammar and a million loan words you already know.

Nitpick: Sounds a lot like Tagalog (Filipino), another SEA language.

[duffyjp]

I've never studied it, but my understanding is that like Japanese, Tagalog has the pitched/stressed thing going on. My wife is Japanese and holy cow I can't tell the difference. Bridge or Chopstick? No idea, they sound exactly the same to my ears...

I'm pretty fluent, but my pronunciation was as good as it's gonna get like 10 years ago which is a frustration.

[Squealer2642]

Both are Austronesian languages

[csomar]

Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines share a lot (language, food, genetics and customs). Look up Austronesian people. They do exist as minorities in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. After a while (4 years so far in SEA), you get to notice them in these countries among the masses.

[adrian_b]

They are both Austronesian languages (also related to the Polynesian languages), so the similarity is not due to coincidence. In SEA there are also other completely unrelated language families besides Austronesian, e.g. the Thai language and the Khmer language belong to different language families with no relationships to Austronesian languages, like Malaysian (besides recent linguistic borrowings between neighbors).

All Austronesian languages are simple phonetically. Also the phonetic simplicity of Japanese is likely to have been caused by an Austronesian substrate related to that of the aborigine Taiwanese people.

[Loughla]

>Jakarta is definitely for the adventurous though, and you had better have an iron stomach.

I love, love, loved backpacking across quite a bit of southeast Asia. I did not like the massive gastrointestinal problems nearly the entire time though.

I spent big money on four things for that trip: the flight, shoes, backpack, and toilet paper. I would've killed and eaten someone to get my hands in alcohol free wet wipes.

[RankingMember]

It'd be nice if there was some way to "acclimate" your gut prior to a trip like that.

[ipince]

> which I can't say about any other SEA language

maybe this doesn't qualify as "south east asian", but Korean is very easy to learn how to read too. It's not latin alphabet, but you only need to learn 20 symbols, and then everything is phonetic! you can have a lot of fun "reading" all the signs after you study a bit on the plane. Not as many loan words though

[mmooss]

How did the language end up with a Latin alphabet?

[itake]

Same as Vietnam: No dominate written language at the time of European Colonialization.

[throwaway2037]

One word: Colonization

[csomar]

The same way the latin world ended up with a Latin Alphabet. It's more practical and they never developed their own. Malaysia, for example, has Jawi which is the Arabic alphabet of the their language. The short answer: the language never developed an "alphabet" and thus adopted one.

[hearsathought]

The dutch colonization of indonesia started in the 1600s and ended in 1949. So plenty of time for the locals, especially the elites, to learn dutch and the alphabet.

[celloductor]

most SEA languages are similar btw