Whoops, forgot to check my typos, so resending the message.
#7 that may happen in Jakarta but not in Flores, they certainly appreciate you trying to speak Bahasa Indonesia or the local language. As #5 says, if they speak English and you are struggling to get any words together in Indonesian, they might prefer to speak to you in English. On a slightly different note, I was in East Timor in 2003, despite the bad memories of the Indonesian occupation, the East Timorese were happy to communicate to you in Indonesian, more so than Portuguese.
In case you are interested here some phrases I learnt in some of the local languages of Flores
Nazan dzao... = my name is... in Ngadha (bajawa)
Ngere EMba? = how are you? in Lio (Kelimutu)
Mbana emba? = where are you going? in the same language
Najan aku... = My name is ... in Lio
I have never had a problem although have encountered Indoensians who are not entirely fluent with bahasa Indoensia (actually great for me as they are more likely to speak the kind of basic Indonesian I can understand best).
I have also used my Indonesian to travel in Malaysia and have encountered more people there who can't (or won't) speak in Malaysian. the funniest thing was when i addressed an Iban woman in Sarawak in Malay and she exclaimed to me in surprise "Oh! You speak Iban!". Obviously her knowledge of Malay so limited that she didn't know that a lot of what she thought were Iban words were actually Malay loan words. Anyway, that is off track. Your post just reminded me of it.
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<hr>i addressed an Iban woman in Sarawak in Malay and she exclaimed to me in surprise "Oh! You speak Iban!". Obviously her knowledge of Malay so limited <hr></blockquote>Or just because Iban and Malay are pretty similar anyway, so when spoken by someone whose Malay is broken, the distinction might get blurred.
I conducted interviews in Indonesian around the country, and found it only to be a problem on Lombok, where many people speak only Sasak and will learn english before they learn Indonesian, they weren't offended, they just didn't know Indonesian well. Everywhere else was just fine.....
#13, not wishing to doubt you, but your assertion that Sasak speakers in Lombok would learn English before Indonesian strikes me as a little odd. I have spent A LOT of time in Lombok, way off the beaten track, and have also interviewed people there. I have encountered a number of people with limited or non-existant Indonesian there, but never someone who could - or was trying to - speak English but not Indonesian. I've visited villages here and there, especially in Nusa Tenggara where many people can't speak Indonesian, but there is always someone who can. Even here in Java there are a surprising number of people with limited Indonesian. But just about anywhere in the archipelago you would be extremely unlikely to find anywhere where there were NO Indonesian speakers at hand. It's also very very nice when you are less than fluent to speak Indonesian with people for whom it is not a first or joint-first language - it levels the playing field a bit.
I've never been to Timor Leste but I've heard that people are quite happy to speak Indonesian with a foreigner in lieu of another shared language, though I would be inclined to try English first there, and perhaps simply mention that I could speak Indonesian rather than address them in it straight off the mark.
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