How to greet people in Indonesia?

How to greet people in Indonesia?

As multicultural country, as well as it languages, Indonesia has different greetings used in colloquial live, as I would explain below.

1. Assalamualaikum, this is a muslim daily greetings, you are strongly recommended use it at your fellow muslim no matter what time it is. Use it while at time you knocking somebody's home-door (for visiting somebody, etc).

2. Salam, this is meaningly same as "good day" in English, you can use it disregarding the time you are at, and you can address it to every person. Selamat pagi (good morning 00.00 AM - 11.00 AM), Selamat Siang (good afternoon, 11.00 AM - 2.00 PM), Selamat Sore (good afternoon, 2.00 PM - 6.00 PM, or until dark), and Selamat Malam (6.00 PM - 00.00 AM other spesific variant of word 'salam')

As two points explained above, we can conlude:

Assalamualaikum, Salam = used in any time

Selamat Pagi = used at 00.00 AM - 11.00 AM

Selamat Siang = used at 11.00 AM - 2.00 PM

Selamat Sore = used at 2.00 PM - 6.00 PM

Selamat Malam = used at 6.00 PM - 00.00 AM

After we know how to greet, it is important to know how to call the Indonesians with honorific title, this is necessary as Indonesians way how to respect the elders, the youngers, the teacher and someone respected in society. Let's see:

Bapak (literally father) used it to address man at so-up-to-20-years-old man, Ibu (literally mother) used it to address woman at so-up-to-20-years-old woman. Bapak/Ibu can be used to address someone married or someone sets to work for live.  If you are up to 20 years old and you meet somebody, whose age below 20 years old, it's strongly recommended to call them "ade" /aa--day/, and you would realized to be called "bapak".

Custom of youth (whose age below 20 years old), are used to call their mate, which is elder slightly several years by "kaka" (iterally: the elders) and call the younger by "ade" (literally: the youngers). This custom is used in everyday by youth in Indonesia and disregarding the gender of person addressed.

Introduction to Indonesian Language

Indonesia and Greater Melayunesian Archipelago

Bahasa Indonesia (so called Bahasa Melayu in Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei) is a predominantly language of Southeast Asia.

There are many features of easiness of Indonesian Language Learning:

1. All verbs completely do not conjugated based on numeral and subjective distinction; They have the equal form for all terms.

2. All nouns do not divided into particular gender; Masculine, Feminine and Neuter nouns do not exist in Indonesian. Marking for certain gender could be formed by putting the gender marker adjacent to the noun. Saudara (siblings) → Saudara laki-laki (brother), saudara perempuan (sister). Since both laki-laki (man) and perempuan (woman) are the Masculine and Feminine markers respectively.

3. All nouns do not declined to certain case; most of Indo-European Languages, Especially Slavic, Uralic and Germanic branches having their nouns declined to other forms, depending on their position as accusative, genitive, etc.

4. Mostly Indonesian vocabularies are derived from numerous languages. Arabic, Dutch and Sanskrit are prominent language derivation. As example, Indonesian has three words depicting book. Buku (Dutch), Pustaka (from Sanskrit), and Kitab (from Arabic). While buku is used denoting book generally. Pustaka denotes book as literature interpretation and Kitab denotes as religion’s holy book.

On the other side, Indonesian has such diabolical features:

1. Indonesian is an inflectional language, by means of three fundamental of part of speech (verb, noun, adjective) is agreed with prefix, suffix and affix. This affix is often considered as hard as it’s counterparts of European Language Cases and Verb Conjugation.

2. Colloquial Indonesian (CI) occasionaly much different to Standard Indonesian (SI). We can say “I want to go” on SI by “Saya hendak pergi” while on CI we will say “Gue mau cabut”. Gue is derived from local languages – Betawinese, and mau is a colloquial form of hendak – both mean “want”. While cabut in CI means go, when comes to SI, it would be mean “pull-something-out”

National flag of Republic of Indonesia, red stripe means bravery. while white ones means purity. This flag derived from ancient Indonesian kingdom’s banner – Called Majapahit Empire. The vast empire that existed by 15 centuries stretching from Philipines to Java, from Melayu peninsula to Papua. Republic of Singapore adopts the same flag, with five-stars and moon added to left edges of red stripe.