# Indonesian dictionary/mouseover: Terbang Dengan Bahasa Indonesia


![ bahasa](http://reganmian.net/files/uploads/Bahasa.png)
It
turns out that I will 99% sure be leaving for Indonesia in two weeks,
going to work for CARE Canada for a year, in Jakarta. I am very excited,
and now that exams are over I threw myself wholeheartedly at learning
Bahasa Indonesia. It’s always exciting starting to learn a new language,
and I found Indonesian to be a very interesting language. However, I was
looking for tools that I was used to from the Chinese-learning
environment, such as
[Wenlin](/blog/2006/05/02/screencast-wenlin-helps-you-read-chinese/),
and [](http://newsinchinese.com/)NewsInChinese, which features Chinese
news items, with a popup when you move your mouse over a phrase,
containing dictionary information.

I was lucky enough to come across the Indonesia site at [Northern
Illinois University](http://www.niu.edu/index.html), which features a
very nice [java
dictionary](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-admin/site.niu.edu/Indonesian/TataBahasa/dictionary/Default.htm).
However, it can only look up one word at a time, and is quite slow.
Seeing it as they very nicely provided a download of the entire
dictionary, in html format, I started to play around. I was supposed to
study for my political science exam, but instead I cooked up this:
[Terbang Dengan Bahasa Indonesia](http://reganmian.net/indonesian), a
little webservice where you can input a text in Indonesian, and it will
return it to you marked-up version, where hovering your mouse over any
of the words recognized (color-marked) gives you a pop-down with
dictionary information. It even knows the most common affixes, and by
returns the definition for bahasa if you type in berbahasa, for example.

Note that this is not meant to be a translation service for people who
don’t know any Indonesian, but rather a crutch for those learning the
language who want to throw themselves at real-life texts, such as [the
article in Indonesian Wikipedia about
Norway](http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegia).

I am still planning to improve it, amongst others by making it possible
to enter a url and have the webpage displayed, with markup. But try it
out already.

Stian

PS: Thanks to NewsinChinese.com for the mouseover-code, and Northern
Illinois University and Patricia Henry.

PPS: The name means Fly with Indonesian, and was thought up by Yishin -
thanks.