IndoLingua B1 Indonesian Course Book — Japanese Edition (Digital eBook + Audio)

About this B1 book for Japanese speakers

This is the CEFR B1 (intermediate) level of the IndoLingua method, written for Japanese speakers. At B1 the goal is to become independent for travel, work and social life in Indonesia. 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 B1

The B1 book focuses on opinions and feelings, the full prefix/suffix system (me-kan, di-, ter-, -an), narration and connected discourse. By the end you will be able to explain and justify opinions, tell stories and deal with most situations while travelling or working.

• CEFR B1 syllabus with clear, level-specific learning outcomes
• Vocabulary lists with Japanese translations and pronunciation
• Grammar for the B1 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 B1 explanations are written against Japanese habits, and the vocabulary lists give Japanese equivalents rather than English ones.

The grammar taught at B1

B1 is the level where Indonesian stops being easy and becomes interesting. You work through the derivational system in full — me-kan and me-i for causatives and applicatives, di- for the passive that Indonesian uses far more than English does, ter- for accidental or resultant states, and -an for nominalisation. You also meet yang, the relative marker that makes long sentences possible.

A sentence you can build at B1: Buku yang saya beli kemarin ternyata lebih menarik daripada yang direkomendasikan teman saya. — "The book I bought yesterday turned out to be more interesting than the one my friend recommended."

What CEFR B1 certifies

CEFR B1 means you can handle most situations likely to arise while travelling, produce connected text on familiar topics, describe experiences and events, and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

Where B1 fits in the A1–C2 path

IndoLingua's Japanese collection runs from A1 (absolute beginner) to C2 (mastery). B1 is the intermediate stage, reached once you can explain and justify opinions, tell stories and deal with most situations while travelling or working. At B2 the question stops being what you can say and becomes which register you say it in.

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.