International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 49

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES SPRING 2016 (12) This (…) how you learn to drive at driving school. In (11), the speaker might presume that ‘worried’ is a verb, just like in Indonesian. Thus, the ‘be’ is missing. Another factor that could contribute to this mistake is that in Indonesian, ‘be’ or ‘adalah’ is used in formal context only. In informal context, ‘adalah’ is often eliminated, such as in: ii Saya guru. [I teacher.] [I am a teacher.] It may then apply when some Indonesians speak or write in English. The ‘be’ is missing in (12). See + object + verb In English, when the verb ‘see’ is followed by an object then another verb, the second verb must be either in the base form (when the action is completed) or –ing form (action in progress). For some Indonesians, this formula is taught only at the advanced level. Thus, some people on my Facebook timeline were not aware of this and errors occurred as in: (13) Do you wanna see XYZ was playing with her friend … (14) She saw a stranger wanted to enter our home … Untidy punctuation mark Although it may not be the best indicator of a language variety, punctuation mark is often mistaken by some people in this study. ‘,’ (the comma) is often missing when it should be inserted in the sentence, such as in: (15) See you later DC! (16) Happy birthday my dearest husband (17) thank you for the trust on me crystal The same pattern can be traced from example (15), (16) and (17). It is understandable that in spoken language, a comma might not be visible. However, in written language, the comma should be inserted when the speaker says something to someone and the referee is included in the sentence. Capitalisation also seems to be an issue here. Some uses of ‘I’ are not capitalised. In English, the first person singular ‘I’ needs to be capitalised at all time, both at the beginning of the sentence and in the sentence. In 50% of the ‘I’ incidents in this study, the first person singular pronoun ‘I’ is not capitalised in the middle of the sentence. A few examples can be found in: (18) do u think i’m wasting my time … 49 | P a g e