International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 49

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
(12)

This (…) how you learn to drive at driving school.

In (11), the speaker might presume that ‘worried’ is a verb, just like in Indonesian. Thus, the
‘be’ is missing.
Another factor that could contribute to this mistake is that in Indonesian, ‘be’ or ‘adalah’ is
used in formal context only. In informal context, ‘adalah’ is often eliminated, such as in:
ii

Saya

guru.

[I

teacher.]

[I am a teacher.]
It may then apply when some Indonesians speak or write in English. The ‘be’ is missing in
(12).
See + object + verb
In English, when the verb ‘see’ is followed by an object then another verb, the second verb
must be either in the base form (when the action is completed) or –ing form (action in
progress). For some Indonesians, this formula is taught only at the advanced level. Thus,
some people on my Facebook timeline were not aware of this and errors occurred as in:
(13)

Do you wanna see XYZ was playing with her friend …

(14)

She saw a stranger wanted to enter our home …

Untidy punctuation mark
Although it may not be the best indicator of a language variety, punctuation mark is often
mistaken by some people in this study. ‘,’ (the comma) is often missing when it should be
inserted in the sentence, such as in:
(15)

See you later DC!

(16)

Happy birthday my dearest husband

(17)

thank you for the trust on me crystal

The same pattern can be traced from example (15), (16) and (17). It is understandable that
in spoken language, a comma might not be visible. However, in written language, the
comma should be inserted when the speaker says something to someone and the referee is
included in the sentence.
Capitalisation also seems to be an issue here. Some uses of ‘I’ are not capitalised. In
English, the first person singular ‘I’ needs to be capitalised at all time, both at the beginning
of the sentence and in the sentence. In 50% of the ‘I’ incidents in this study, the first person
singular pronoun ‘I’ is not capitalised in the middle of the sentence. A few examples can be
found in:
(18)

do u think i’m wasting my time …
49 | P a g e