WHY DO INDONESIAN THINK THAT LEARNING ENGLISH IS DIFFICULT ?

Learning foreign language, especially English will take time for us to get use to it because we know that Indonesian grammar and the other aspects are different from English.  Here I will share few differences which create the confusion on learning English for Indonesian people.

 1.      Indonesian gender confusion(Nothing to do with transexuals here)

Indonesian does not distinguish between “he”, “she” and “it”. When it comes to third person singular pronouns, Indonesians just use the same word (dia) no matter whether it's a male, female or an animal without any specific gender. While that may sound confusing, it's not, because the context is key. Here's an example:  If I start talking about “Mr Smith”, then I have established by my use of "Mr" that he is male. So subsequently when referring to Mr Smith, I can just refer to him as dia because whoever I'm talking to knows that it is a man. But if I then start talking about Mr Smith's daughter, or Mr Smith's dog, I also use dia.  But when Indonesians speak English, they commonly confuse "he", "she" and "it". Thus it is common to hear phrases like, "Yesterday I was talking to my father and she got a bit angry" or "Check out that girl, he has nice legs".

2. Tense Confusion

Indonesian has no separate markers for tenses (as in the English “had”/”has”/”will have”/”is having”).  Everything is said in the present tense. If that sounds strange, it's not. Again, it’s all context – once I establish that I’m talking about something that happened yesterday, it is just assumed that I’m speaking in past tense, and I use the same verbs as I would if I was talking about the future or the present.  Obviously, when speaking English, Indonesians can forget to apply tense to their verbs, saying things like “yesterday I go to theshop”.

3.Plurals.

In English, the suffix "-s" on the end of a word indicates plurality. However, Indonesian doesn't really have plural suffixes. Sometimes, plurality is indicated by simply doubling the word. So teman means "friend", and teman-teman means "friends", which does not imply a specific number. But other times, a single teman is enough, accompanied by a contextual word to indicate whether it is plural or not. So if I add banyak ("many"), I have banyak teman ("many friends"). The use of "many" implies plurality, so it is not necessary to further indicate that there is more than one friend in this situation. Thus the use of the suffix "-s" in the English phrase "many friends" is redundant, as saying "many friend" would convey exactly the same message. Likewise, if I have 80 teman, the plurality is implied by the number. Thus, many Indonesians when the speak English say things like “I own 2 house” or “We have enough player to make three team”, because it makes perfect sense in their own language.



4.Pronuncation
Certain sounds don't exist naturally in Indonesian, such as /sh/, which is usually mispronounced as /s/. /th/ is pronounced either as /d/ or /t/ depending on the word. /ch/ exists in Indonesian, but never at the end of the word; Indonesians struggle to pronounce this in that context, and it usually comes out as /ts/. Regarding vowels, /a/ as in the English "cat" doesn't exist in Indonesian and is pronounced /e/ as it "pet" instead.
Not all Indonesians can pronounce /f/ and /v/, pronouncing them as /p/ and /b/ instead. The example that they will say "Hep you pinis? I hep pinis. So now you won to go to de bits to kets de pis, or you won to wats the pilm instead?" So that phrase would properly read, "Have you finished? I have finished. So now you want to go to the beach to catch the fish, or you want to watch the film instead?"

You can read more in http://eurasian-sensation.blogspot.com/2011/02/mistakes-indonesians-make-when-trying.html