Some good Indonesian language books

If you spend a little bit of time each day studying, you'll be surprised how quickly you can begin to pick up the language.

Right now I'm using a book/audio pack called "Teach Yourself Indonesian", by Christopher Byrnes. You can find it on Amazon for about $20, and on Barnes & Noble's site for about $25. I got it from B&N because they offer free shipping for it that takes 3 (or less) business days to arrive.

This book has been very helpful. The dialogues are natural and relevant, and the audio quality of the (2) CDs is excellent. The lessons can progress rather quickly sometimes, but I think that that is more a plus than a minus; if you study consistently, you can quickly advance past the ultra-basic stuff, and feel like you're really learning how to use the language.

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When you first use the CDs it will seem like the speakers are talking pretty fast, but this is just because you're not used to hearing the language. After a few lessons you'll be able to understand without too much trouble. It's really rewarding to study the new vocabulary for one of the dialogues (without reading the dialogue in the book), and then listen to the CD and figure out exactly what the speakers are saying. The book also has little informational tidbits here and there about Indonesian culture, which is pretty cool.

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The only drawback I've found so far with this book is that there aren't very many excersises that make you use what you've learned to compose original sentences in Indonesian.

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Overall, I'd give this book 4.3 out of 5 stars, and I'd recommend it heavily to anyone learning Bahasa Indonesia. I'd also strongly suggest that you make flashcards for all the vocabulary you learn in each lesson, and use the vocabulary you've learned to write about yourself or make up a stories, and practice imaginary conversations.

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I just bought a pocket-sized book called "Instant Indonesian" by Stuart Robson.

I've only glanced over this book a few times, but it looks really good. It has some helpful words and phrases in it, and also explains how the words fit into sentences. This book is good for helping you learn some basic sentence patterns and helpful phrases, but it shouldn't stand alone. I'd recommend getting this book to supplement a comprehensive Bahasa Indonesia course like the book/CD pack above. You can get "Instant Indonesian" for about $7 on Amazon and at B&N.