IndoLingua A2 Indonesian Course Book — Chinese Edition (Digital eBook + Audio)
About this A2 book for Chinese speakers
This is the CEFR A2 (elementary) level of the IndoLingua method, written for Chinese speakers. At A2 the goal is to hold short everyday conversations with confidence. Every explanation, translation and example is given in Chinese, 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 Chinese translations and pronunciation
- Grammar for the A2 level explained in Chinese 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 Chinese speaker
What you already have for free
Grammatically, Indonesian is the closest of these nine languages to Chinese. No conjugation, no gender, no cases, and aspect carried by separate words: sudah behaves much like 了 and belum like 还没. Even the classifier system transfers — where Chinese uses 个, 本 or 只, Indonesian uses buah, orang and ekor, and the counting pattern is the same.
What you have to unlearn
The two real differences are the writing system and the sound system. Indonesian uses 26 Latin letters, so there are no characters to memorise and reading becomes possible within days rather than years. And there are no tones at all — a word keeps its meaning whatever pitch you give it, which takes some getting used to in the opposite direction.
The mistakes Chinese speakers actually make
Chinese speakers tend to omit yang, the relative marker, because Chinese handles modification with 的 in a different position: the book I bought is buku yang saya beli, and dropping yang breaks the sentence. Topic-comment structures also carry over too literally, producing sentences that are understandable but audibly non-native.
Pronunciation: what to drill first
Final -m, -n and -ng already exist in Chinese and cause no trouble, but final -t, -k and -p need work since Mandarin has no stop finals: sakit, anak and tetap all end on a released consonant. Consonant clusters such as praktik also need practice.
Words you already know
Hokkien loanwords are already inside the language: teh (茶), mi (麵), bakso, tahu (豆腐), lumpia, cap cai, kecap.
This is why the Chinese edition exists as its own book rather than a translated appendix: the A2 explanations are written against Chinese habits, and the vocabulary lists give Chinese 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 Chinese 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.