Bahasa Indonesia old

Indonesian has thousands of words that resemble English words. Lots of them serve an obvious purpose: they fill a gap in the vocabulary. Examples of these are pistol, helikopter, komputer. There was no word to convey those concepts before those borrowed words came along. But the more interesting ones are the many that do not fill a gap. Instead they exist alongside a ‘twin’ word – either native to the language or long ago assimilated into it – that means virtually the same. For example, diskusi exists alongside pembicaraan, both meaning “discussion”. There are hundreds of such pairs: so many that when a speaker or writer consistently chooses western words over their nonwestern twins it creates a distinctive style. And the number of these pairs is growing all the time. A few examples only of such pairs: western word older synonym meaning berkompetisi bersaing to compete diskusi pembicaraan discussion evaluasi penilaian evaluation identita...

Indonesian has thousands of words that resemble English words. Lots of them serve an obvious purpose: they fill a gap in the vocabulary. Examples of these are pistol, helikopter, komputer. There was no word to convey those concepts before those borrowed words came along. But the more interesting ones are the many that do not fill a gap. Instead they exist alongside a ‘twin’ word – either native to the language or long ago assimilated into it – that means virtually the same. For example, diskusi exists alongside pembicaraan, both meaning “discussion”. There are hundreds of such pairs: so many that when a speaker or writer consistently chooses western words over their nonwestern twins it creates a distinctive style. And the number of these pairs is growing all the time. A few examples only of such pairs: western word older synonym meaning berkompetisi bersaing to compete diskusi pembicaraan discussion evaluasi penilaian ...