VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Voice of Indonesia presents Let’s Speak Indonesian, a program that introduces the Indonesian vocabulary and guides you to speak in the language. Mari Berbahasa Indonesia or Let’s Speak Indonesian is a joint initiative of Voice of Indonesia and the Language Development Agency of the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture. Today’s topic is still about Lingkungan Rumah which means Neighborhood. 

Read to the conversation entitled “Rumah- Rumah Disini Asri” which means “The Houses Here Are Green” This conversation is between Kevin and Boris, his new neighbor. Kevin gives information about the condition of houses in the complex.

Having listened to the conversation, now I am going to introduce some vocabulary and expressions related to the topic of the day.

In the dialog, you listen to a statement “Rumah- rumah disini asri” (2X) which means “The houses here are green”. The repeated words rumah-rumah means “many houses”. The words repetition is used to give information that there are many houses in the location.

Other examples:

We can also use repeated words to mark plurality in the other examples. For example, orang-orang which means people and pohon-pohon which means trees.

Orang-orang di kompleks ini ramah (2X) which means The people in this complex are friendly

Pohon-pohon disini besar (2X) which means The trees here are big

Besides repeating words, you can also use the word beberapa (2X) which means some to state plurality, but not so many.

For example:

Beberapa rumah rusak (2X) which means some houses are damaged

Kita harus menjaga kebersihan (2X) which means We have to keep cleanliness

That was “Let’s Speak Indonesian” for today. Hopefully, this edition can be useful for those of you who want to know more about Indonesian language.