Private online Indonesian lessons
Personal Bahasa Indonesia lessons built around the conversations you actually need to have. Vicky teaches Indonesian online, one to one, to students in other countries.
You can also email Vicky.
Who it is for
People come to Indonesian for very different reasons, and that changes what a useful lesson looks like.
You have never studied Indonesian and want a clear place to start rather than a pile of apps and word lists.
You want to arrive able to handle the first few weeks: finding a place, shopping, getting around, meeting the neighbours.
You want to talk to your partner’s family directly, without everything being translated for you.
You need to follow a meeting, read a message thread, and pitch your politeness at the right level.
The approach
One to one, so the lesson follows you. Nothing is locked to a syllabus that someone else needed. If you have a conversation coming up this week, that can be the lesson.
Practical Indonesian, with the grammar that explains it. You learn what to say, and enough of the system underneath it to build your own sentences instead of repeating set phrases.
The Indonesian you read and the Indonesian you hear. Written Indonesian and everyday spoken Indonesian are not the same thing, and learners who only ever meet the first one tend to stall. That makes how Indonesians actually speak day to day part of the material rather than an afterthought.
In a lesson
Lessons are private, so the balance between these is yours to set, and it can change as your Indonesian does.
The Indonesian you need for ordinary exchanges: greetings, small talk, shops, transport, plans.
Spoken Indonesian moves faster and drops more than a textbook suggests. Understanding it is a skill of its own.
Indonesian spelling is consistent, so a small amount of work early on pays off for a long time.
Affixes, negation, word order and aspect, introduced when they start to matter rather than all at once.
Knowing when to use saya and when to use aku, and how to sound polite without sounding stiff.
Messages, signs, forms and news, whichever of those you actually deal with.
The teacher
Vicky is an Indonesian language teacher. She teaches Bahasa Indonesia online to students around the world, and also teaches Javanese.
Indonesian Fluency is where that teaching now lives. If you first came across Vicky through Fluency Indonesian, this is the same teacher and the same lessons, at a new address.
Free to read
Short, practical guides to the parts of Indonesian that most often trip people up.
Getting started
Begin with pronunciation, which is a short syllabus rather than a long project, then a handful of sentence patterns: the missing verb to be, tidak versus bukan, and the question words. Vocabulary lists can wait until you have somewhere to put the words.
Getting started
For English speakers, Indonesian is one of the more approachable languages to start: no gender, no cases, no verb conjugation and no tenses. The difficulty arrives later, in the affix system, the distance between formal and spoken Indonesian, and understanding speech at natural speed.
Language and culture
Bahasa means language in Indonesian, so Bahasa on its own is not the name of anything. In English, call the language Indonesian. In Indonesian, call it bahasa Indonesia, written with a small b inside a sentence and a capital B as a school subject or a title.
Common questions
The beginning is more approachable than most languages an English speaker is likely to try. There is no grammatical gender, verbs are not conjugated for person, there are no cases and no tenses to memorise, and spelling matches pronunciation closely. The difficulty arrives later, with the affix system and the gap between written and spoken Indonesian. There is a fuller answer in the guide to how hard Indonesian is to learn.
They are the same language. Indonesian is the English name and Bahasa Indonesia is what the language calls itself. Calling it just “Bahasa” is a common habit among learners, but bahasa only means “language”, so it is worth dropping. See what to call the Indonesian language.
It depends entirely on what you want to be able to do. Holding a simple everyday exchange comes sooner in Indonesian than in most languages, because there is no conjugation, gender or case to get through first. Following two Indonesians talking at speed takes considerably longer, because everyday spoken Indonesian is not the language textbooks teach. Anyone quoting you a number of hours is guessing.
Yes. Lessons are online, so you can join from any country. Most of what makes Indonesian hard to learn alone is what a teacher is for: pronunciation you cannot hear yourself getting wrong, the distance between textbook and spoken Indonesian, and simply having someone to talk to. None of that requires being in Indonesia.
Yes. Vicky teaches Javanese (Bahasa Jawa) as well as Indonesian. Javanese is a separate language, not a dialect of Indonesian. You can read more on the Javanese lessons page.
No. Lessons are private, so there is no fixed syllabus to work through and no levels to pass. What a lesson contains depends on what you are trying to be able to do, and it can change as your Indonesian does.
A short message is enough to start. Say where you are with Indonesian and what you want to use it for, and Vicky will come back with the practical details.