IndoLingua A1 Indonesian Course Book — Japanese Edition (Digital eBook + Audio)

About this A1 book for Japanese speakers

This is the CEFR A1 (absolute beginner) level of the IndoLingua method, written for Japanese speakers. At A1 the goal is to make your very first contact with Indonesian and survive basic everyday situations. Every explanation, translation and example is given in Japanese, so you never have to learn Indonesian through a third language.

What you will learn at A1

The A1 book focuses on the alphabet and pronunciation, greetings, numbers, family, ordering food and simple present-tense sentences. By the end you will be able to introduce yourself, ask simple questions and handle basic shopping and directions.

• CEFR A1 syllabus with clear, level-specific learning outcomes
• Vocabulary lists with Japanese translations and pronunciation
• Grammar for the A1 level explained in Japanese with example sentences
• Dialogues set in real Indonesian contexts (Bali, Jakarta, Yogyakarta)
• End-of-chapter exercises with answer keys
• Native audio recordings for every dialogue and vocabulary item

Learning Indonesian as a Japanese speaker

What you already have for free

Japanese speakers arrive with three habits that transfer. The five Japanese vowels are almost exactly the Indonesian five, so pronunciation is unusually easy. Nouns are not marked for plural in either language. And Japanese counters (本, 匹, 人) map directly onto Indonesian classifiers buah, ekor and orang — the concept needs no explaining, only new words.

What you have to unlearn

The order has to be inverted. Indonesian is subject-verb-object where Japanese is subject-object-verb, so the verb moves to the middle of every sentence you build. There are no particles like は, が or を: position alone marks the role of a word, and adding a marker where Indonesian expects none is the most visible learner error.

The mistakes Japanese speakers actually make

Politeness does not work the same way. Indonesian has registers, but they live in the choice of pronoun and title (Anda, kamu, Bapak, Ibu) rather than in verb forms, so there is no です/ます layer to switch on. Japanese speakers also tend to leave the subject unspoken, which Japanese allows and Indonesian generally does not.

Pronunciation: what to drill first

The main obstacle is consonant clusters: Japanese inserts a vowel between consonants, so praktik, struktur and transportasi need deliberate practice. Indonesian r is tapped rather than the Japanese ら-row flap, and l and r are distinct phonemes — lupa (forget) and rupa (appearance) are different words.

Words you already know

Words borrowed into both languages are recognisable: televisi (テレビ), komputer (コンピューター), kamera (カメラ), bis (バス), tiket (チケット), roti and sepatu.

This is why the Japanese edition exists as its own book rather than a translated appendix: the A1 explanations are written against Japanese habits, and the vocabulary lists give Japanese equivalents rather than English ones.

The grammar taught at A1

The grammar load at A1 is deliberately light, because Indonesian lets you say useful things almost immediately. You cover the fixed subject-verb-object order, the demonstratives ini and itu, possession by simple juxtaposition (rumah saya), the existential ada, and the two negations that beginners confuse most: tidak before verbs and adjectives, bukan before nouns.

A sentence you can build by the end of chapter three: Saya mau nasi goreng, tidak pedas. — "I want fried rice, not spicy." Every word in it is unchanged from its dictionary form, which is the point of starting with Indonesian.

What CEFR A1 certifies

CEFR A1 means you can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases, introduce yourself, ask and answer questions about personal details, and interact simply provided the other person speaks slowly and clearly.

Where A1 fits in the A1–C2 path

IndoLingua's Japanese collection runs from A1 (absolute beginner) to C2 (mastery). A1 is the absolute beginner stage, reached once you can introduce yourself, ask simple questions and handle basic shopping and directions. The next level, A2, keeps these sentences and adds time to them: what happened, what is happening, what will.

Why learn Indonesian?

Indonesian is spoken by 270 million people and is the official language of Indonesia. FSI ranks it as Category II (around 900 hours to professional fluency for English speakers) — no verb conjugations, no noun genders, no tones, Latin alphabet.