How to Know What Ain’t Said?

A cigarette ad reads “one person was asked, (but) one class have answered. Incredible!”

To know what ain’t said is simple: by learning socio-cultural aspect in the society. Current affairs for example.

Currently, seeing such a view, people here will laugh.

I won’t tell you why, except: it’s related to politics.

For the sake of non-judgmental, I can only say: “May he be strong and patient”. 😇

EDIT:

It’s found out that the picture is just a HOAX 🙄

Bahasa Indonesia is One of The Most Difficult Languages to Learn (?)

Really? it’s difficult to master Indonesian language?

It can be “Yes” and “No” at the same time.

“No”, because its language structure is simple. No gender, no verb changes, no pronoun differences, etc.

“Yes”, because you should find the CONTEXT before you pick the right diction based on social relations: by ethnic, by occupation, by family etc.

The language is simple, but the implementation is complicated.

You sometimes should figure out the “meaning” that is not stated in a sentence due to cultural obstacle.

After learning it quite well, you might be able to speak in regular happenings, such as: “Berapa harganya?” (=How much is it?). “Dimana mini market terdekat?” (=Where is the nearest minimarket?” etc.

BUT, when you meet a grandma, you should not call her “kamu” (=you), instead, you should pick the most correct diction among : “Mbah”, or “Oma”, or “Nenek” etc. according to what her ethnic is.

If you wanna give money for sorta good assistance to somebody from certain ethnic that “refuses” by saying “tidak usah” (you don’t have to pay me). You should force him/her to accept the money. But then again, there is also possibility that he/she really don’t want you to pay them.

For another certain ethnic, you cannot ask “how much did you give money for your daughter’s wedding?”. While it’s okay for other ethnics.

You may get the meaning in conversation with a seller. But in political or philosophy debates, the situation is much different.

In short, you should have a standard knowledge of local socio-cultural aspects first if you wish the conversation will go smooth. For that purpose, you might need to hang out with locals sufficiently to gather the knowledge from them.

However, even in conversation among Indonesians, they could possibly go into certain misunderstanding due to difference of ethnics.

By fact, there are 400s ethnics and 700s languages in Indonesia. And fortunately they can communicate to each other mostly due to the existence of National Language: Bahasa Indonesia.