The USA and Indonesia

The USA and Indonesia

By: Anita Galuh Sri Hapsari

            Every nation has their own way to live that becomes their characteristic, for example the characteristic of the USA and Indonesia. Those nations have similarities and differences of the characteristic. One of the similarities is both countries are lead by a president. There is no king or queen who leads the country. Moreover, the USA and Indonesia are kind of democratic country. It is shown by the way of choosing the leader of each country, the president. People in those countries choose the president by electing the candidates as they want. Everyone, who is the citizen of the country, has a bright to elect the president. However, the USA and Indonesia also have some differences. There are some aspects that can be used to compare the USA and Indonesia, such as the people, language style, and habit.

            The people in the USA consist of some races, such as white people, Afro-Americans, Jews, Latin-American, Asian-American, Indian, and some other ethnic groups. In Indonesia, there are also many races, such as Mongoloid, Austroloid, Weddoid, Negroid, Proto Melayu, and Deutro Melayu. Each race has different style of language. In the USA, most of people speak English, but their English style is not same each other. The Latin-Americans always speak Spanglish, the combination between Spanish and English, for example “porque I knew you had yours”. In that sentence, ‘porque’ is a Spanish word which means ‘because’. Moreover, Afro-Americans usually speak English with a lot of slangs in their daily life, for example “you are air head” which means “you are stupid”. In Indonesia, most of people speak Bahasa Indonesia, but the way they speak is not same each other. It is like what happen in the USA. For example, the Javanese people usually speak Bahasa Indonesia by combining Indonesian words and Javanese words. Many Indonesian usually say ‘wadah kegiatan’ to describe a community for doing activities. The word ‘wadah’ actually is from Javanese language but it is common to use in Bahasa Indonesia.

            The other aspect for comparing the USA and Indonesia is the habit. In the USA, people like to be punctual. Americans appraise the time very much. That is why they have proverb “time is money”. They do not want to waste the time because it means wasting money. Besides, Indonesians have different proverb “ perlahan tapi pasti” or slowly but sure. This proverb means that it is not a problem if people are a little bit late or do something slowly but sure that they can get a good result. So, lateness is not a big problem if they can elicit the result as well as they want. Moreover, the difference is about the way people saying. In the USA, people speak more frontal than Indonesian. Americans will say ‘NO’ if they want to reject something. For example, when someone asked them to help but they do not want to, the Americans commonly will say “I’m sorry. I can’t”. On the other side, the Indonesian will say “I’m sorry. I want to help you but I have another business that I have to do now”. The Indonesians will say less frontal to reject something.

            In conclusion, the USA and Indonesia have some similarities and also differences. The similarities and differences become the identity of the nation. The differences are not bad, but they can be the unique things of the nation. Every nation has different people, language style, and habit of the people, which become the common aspects to compare. By comparing those aspects, people can know the characteristic of the nations. The USA has its own characteristic, which are the races of the people, the language style that usually used in daily conversation, and also the habit of punctuality and frontal speaking. On the other hand, Indonesia also has its characteristic on the people, the language style, punctuality, and less frontal speaking.