International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 50
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
(19)
finally i know exactly what i want to do in my life
(20)
And now i try hard to make it happen.
(21)
Feels like a nightmare i wanna wake up.
This echoes the early studies of computer-mediated communication when untidy sentence
mechanics (punctuation, spelling and grammar) were commonly found (Baron: 2008).
Word for word translation
A number of word to word translations also occur in this study, as in:
(22)
what happen with you
(23)
Distance cannot separate the friendship.
Example (22) shows that the speaker directly translates the sentence from Indonesian to
English. In Indonesian, it is correct to say:
iii
Apa
yang terjadi
dengan
-mu?
[What
happen
with
you?]
[What happened to you?]
This particular example demonstrates that communicative norms of Indonesian have
influenced the use of English by some Indonesians.
Furthermore, example (23) exhibits pragmatic context or background of the speaker affects
his or her use of English. In Indonesian, it will be fine to say:
iv
Jarak
tidak bisa
memisahkan persahabatan.
[Distance
cannot
separate
friendship.]
However, the English translation may not be correct. The speaker might mean ‘Distance
cannot separate me and my best friends’ or ‘Distance cannot ruin friendship.’
Other grammatical mistakes
The following examples exhibit some broken grammatical rules:
(24)
there’s always be consequences you should face.
(25)
is anyone here want to be a speaker in a seminar?
The ‘be’ is often mistaken and sometimes used to replace the other auxiliary forms. In
sentence (25), for example, instead of using ‘does’, the speaker writes ‘is’. It could be
influenced by some early English language learning which usually teaches sentences that
include ‘be’ in it such as present progressive tense (‘I am studying’) . Other auxiliary forms
are not often displayed. Thus, some learners might assume that ‘be’ could be applied in all
contexts.
50 | P a g e