Born in Beijing, Lucia Lu came to Australia when she was three years old.
Lucia admits that she is pretty comfortable speaking Mandarin as her every-day language even though it is not her first language.
"English is sort of, I would say, my first language," Lucia says to SBS Indonesian.
However, her interest is in Bahasa Indonesia.
Lucia Lu started to learn Bahasa Indonesia at year 7. Source: Supplied
Lucia's first encounter with Bahasa Indonesia was when she had to learn Bahasa Indonesia for 100 hours at year 7 Ryde Secondary College. She then decided to take it again at year 9 and all the way to year 12.
"I had a really great teacher and I think she just made every lesson really fun.. made me enjoy the language, even the grammar," she says.
The 26-year-old Bahasa teacher at one of the North Sydney's High Schools claims she knew that she enjoyed learning Bahasa Indonesia and could get a good mark. Thus, she chose to take this subject up for her Bachelor Degree in University of Sydney even though she did not know yet which path to choose at that time.
"Maybe about after one year at uni, I just decided I really enjoy languages. So I kept doing Bahasa and I also took up Mandarin," she says.
"And I also made some good friends [who are] Indonesians. And you know Sydney Uni was close to Kensington [with] all the Indonesian restaurants."
Lucia admits that good programs offered to her by university helps to cultivate her love of the subject.
"Like we had native speakers program as well as good lecturers," she says. "So that made me wanna continue it and then also be a teacher."
Is it easy to learn?
Although not as complicated as other foreign languages, Lucia says that Bahasa Indonesia still has certain grammar that is interesting to learn.
"I really like how certain prefixes and suffixes mean something. For example like ke-an that is usually a noun.. if it's ber- or me- it's a verb.," she says.
"In English often there's no rules like that. So in Indonesia it's a lot easier I think [the grammar] because you just need to remember the base word, and then all the prefixes and suffixes would change the meaning of the word."
As to the difficulty level of Indonesian taught at high school, Lucia Lu says that it is not that complicated.
"I think it's easier in a way because at high school level we're not teaching them anything very hard. So it's still quite easy," she says.
"When you study it at university level I still think that was a lot harder and stressful compared to teaching, I think.
"I enjoy every class. We can play games with the students, we can do dialogs, speaking.. So I don't think that's harder. It's more enjoyable."
Informal words and slangs
Since started teaching in 2016, Lucia claims she have taught hundreds of students taking Bahasa Indonesia. And over the years, she says she has 'to try to keep updated' with the language.
"At the moment I use a textbook that's quite old so.. lots of Indonesian textbooks are made a long time ago and are not very new ones," Lucia says.
"For example in our current textbook, it's still talking about going to the internet cafe, or reading magazines.. or listening to cassettes.. whereas kids these days they don't know what that is.
"And in terms of the language, bahasa gaul [slang] is always changing. So it's very difficult to try to teach up-to-date language as well," admitting she has just learnt one new slang 'mantul'.
Bahasa Indonesia, in practice, is known to have many slangs and informal words. Lucia Lu says she tries to teach both practical and formal Indonesian languages to her pupils.
Your Bahasa Indonesia could come in handy when you're about to bargain at local markets. Source: Getty Images/lechatnoir
"Most of the time you don't have the opportunity to speak formally [so] I think that's why it's important for the students as well to have opportunities to do immersion.. or in country study.. so they have the experience to communicate authentically, not just form the textbooks," she says.
The similar sentiment is shared by David Fettling, whose back in July last year mentions that the standard Bahasa Indonesia is rarely spoken in casual conversations and that Indonesian people have options of using one of hundreds of regional languages and dialects if they think Bahasa Indonesia is insufficient.
"People sometimes find Bahasa Indonesia [is] inadequate to express what they want," read the BBC article.
To this, Lucia Lu has different opinion.
"I wouldn't call it inadequate, perhaps succinct," she says. "I like how you can express certain things using just one or two words.
"But as a non-native speaker I can understand the writer's frustration when trying to communicate verbally and most people don't respond in bahasa baku [standard language]."
That said, Lucia - who admits that nasal sound or 'ng' as the most difficult to pronounce - says that she thinks learning formal Bahasa Indonesia is still important for Australians and relevant to date.
"I think it would be great if we all did learn formal Bahasa just because that's something that unites Indonesia.. Bahasa Indonesia, right?" she says.
"And we're neighbours geographically so nothing can change that. We're very physically close and I think we need to learn [it] to get along with our neighbours.
"There's always gonna be such a big impact between Australia and Indonesia that we just have to learn to understand each other better."
SBS Radio presents the to encourage and celebrate a love of learning languages in Australia. Tell us how learning a language makes a world of difference to you and WIN! We are calling out to languages learners of all ages to enter, including those learning English and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.
