Easy Indonesian: A Complete Language Course and Pocket Dictionary in One (Free Companion Online Audio) (Easy Language Series)

Fantastic book. This is the best one I've found thus far for Indonesian. It gets straight to the point with useful vocabulary and grammar points, as well as the occasional culture point. I doubt I'll need another book to explain the questions that pop up as I learn Indonesian. Just pair this with a repetition system and you'll be good to go.

In terms of the balance between cultural notes, grammar explanations and vocab build, with useful dictionaries at the back, this book beats in my opinion the other teach yourself books for Indonesian. This person really shows TY and Colloquial the proper way to do it. Could be improved with an audio section, of course. It's not really a phrasebook and dictionary but an actual language course and at basic level going up to about 1200 words. It sells itself short by saying it is a Phrasebook and it oversells itself by saying you will speak Indonesian effortlessly in a few hours as clearly it takes more than a few hours to process a 200 page language course, but if one overlooks these descriptive flaws it is a good book and also the illustrations are helpful and interesting. They are all in black and white and the book does betray signs of having been written more than 20 years ago, but these are minor quibbles.

A fine primer. ...

I have a friend in Indonesia to help me learn Bahasa but I’m making slow progress. This book is really helping me learn faster.

Pretty good to help my American kids to learn Bahasa Indonesia. I’m Indonesian and in my opinion this book is the best that I could find by far. It’s pretty easy to understand. However, it could use some improvements here and there.

I found Everyday Indonesian very useful and well-organized. The format was clear and the cultural notes and photos were helpful. Appendix A on "Verb and Noun Affixes" was worth the price of the book. It clearly explains the prefixes and suffixes which are confusing for beginners. Although the book was written in 1992, it clearly has resonated with Bahasa learners as this is the 8th printing (2007). Note: my July 2007 edition, which I recently bought, has a different cover.

helpful

Not only is this a GREAT book to learn basic Indonesian vocabulary, grammar, and basic "survival" phrases/sentences, but it was also at a great price! The book was in excellent condition and had no writing in the text. (It took 1 week for the book to ship from California to Phoenix, which was too long.) My only regret is that I did not order the book sooner.