IndoLingua A2 Indonesian Course Book — Japanese Edition (Digital eBook + Audio)
About this A2 book for Japanese speakers
This is the CEFR A2 (elementary) level of the IndoLingua method, written for Japanese speakers. At A2 the goal is to hold short everyday conversations with confidence. 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 A2
The A2 book focuses on daily routines, past and future time markers, shopping and bargaining, transport, and the core affixes ber-/me-. By the end you will be able to describe your day, make plans and manage common travel and market interactions.
- CEFR A2 syllabus with clear, level-specific learning outcomes
- Vocabulary lists with Japanese translations and pronunciation
- Grammar for the A2 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 A2 explanations are written against Japanese habits, and the vocabulary lists give Japanese equivalents rather than English ones.
The grammar taught at A2
A2 is where time enters the language. Indonesian never conjugates, so it uses separate markers — sudah (already), belum (not yet), sedang (in progress) and akan (will) — and learning to place them correctly is most of the level. Alongside them you meet the first two productive prefixes, ber- for states and activities and me- for transitive verbs.
A sentence you can build at A2: Kemarin saya sudah pergi ke pasar untuk membeli buah. — "Yesterday I already went to the market to buy fruit." Note that pergi and beli keep their shape; only the markers around them change.
What CEFR A2 certifies
CEFR A2 means you can understand sentences and frequently used expressions about immediate relevance — personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment — and communicate in simple, routine exchanges.
Where A2 fits in the A1–C2 path
IndoLingua's Japanese collection runs from A1 (absolute beginner) to C2 (mastery). A2 is the elementary stage, reached once you can describe your day, make plans and manage common travel and market interactions. At B1 the affix system stops being two prefixes and becomes the full derivational network of the language.
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.