Ngomong Opo?

I’ve been living here for more than a year, and my Indonesian is not where I want it to be. I was arrogant in the beginning of my service. My language skills were budding, and I thought it would be so easy to become near to fluent living in the village. I thought I’d be conversing with grace and joking with flair. The truth is I can barely order a hot tea. My bad pronunciation is no longer considered cute. It’s just a sign of my incompetence.

I can converse Indonesian with people that know me well. They are used to how I speak, my sentence structure, and intonation. I can talk to them easily. But with people I just met or the waiter at the café, no cigar.

The weirdest thing about this language deficiency is that I’m more comfortable speaking in the local dialect, Javanese, rather than in the national language. While this skill is helpful for getting close to people in my village, it’s completely inappropriate when used in formal situations, which occurs quite often.

I just want to preface that Peace Corps prepared me well in terms of language acquisition. I practiced a lot during training. I practiced with the taxi drivers, my neighbors, and my host family. Things were looking good. I guess I just got lazy when I moved to permanent site. I actively sought out the English speakers in my area and neglected to practice every day with my host family. So while I improved my public speaking skills (in English) and improved my joke telling skills (in Javanese), my Indonesian vocabulary went down. It’s my own fault.

I’m thankful that most people in my province mix Javanese and Indonesian in their daily speech, so whenever my laziness to practice Indonesian leads to a miscommunication or misunderstanding, I briefly excuse my incompetence with the Javanese question:

“Ngomong opo?” (What did you say?)

This usually delights people and tricks them into thinking I’ve totally mastered Indonesian and have moved on to Javanese. They don’t realize that I haven’t even answered the question. This is not a proud moment for me. It actually depresses me, but I’m trying to just survive. My mood is further dampened after I go to my favorite café and try to order a simple hot tea using Indonesian. The waiter replies:

“Ngomong opo?”

Curses! Foiled again!