The best AI apps to practice speaking Indonesian

What you need to practice speaking Indonesian

Good news first. In our ranking of 67 languages, Indonesian is the 57th hardest for English speakers, at 3,327 effort points. That puts it close to Italian (3,244), a bit easier than Dutch (3,422), and at just over half of what Thai takes (6,184).

No tenses, no genders, no new alphabet. What makes Indonesian harder than it looks is something else: the Indonesian in your textbook isn’t quite the Indonesian people speak.

• Textbook Indonesian and street IndonesianYour course teaches Saya tidak tahu, I don’t know. A friend says Aku nggak tau, and in Jakarta, Gue nggak tau. Sudah becomes udah, bagaimana becomes gimana. Both are right, in different places. You need the standard form to be understood anywhere, and lots of listening to follow everyday talk.
• Prefixes and suffixesOne root, many words. From ajar you get belajar, to learn, mengajar, to teach, pelajar, a student, and pelajaran, a lesson. Me- even changes the first sound: tulis becomes menulis, to write. And -kan adds someone: membeli is to buy, membelikan is to buy for someone. Getting these right while you talk takes practice.
• Polite without saying “you”Indonesians often avoid a word for “you”. To an older man in a shop, it’s Bapak mau pesan apa?, literally “What does sir want to order?”. Use Bapak or Ibu with people older than you, Mas or Mbak with a young man or woman, especially in Java. Kamu is for friends, and Anda is polite but stiff, the word of forms and adverts. You want those slips fixed while you talk.
• Words said twiceAnak is a child, anak-anak is children. But doubling doesn’t always mean more. Jalan is a road or to walk, jalan-jalan is to go out and have fun. Hati is the heart, hati-hati is be careful. And kupu-kupu, a butterfly, always comes doubled. You pick these up by hearing them.
• Lots of Indonesian you understandSpeaking activates the words you have. New words come from input: videos, podcasts and texts where you already understand most of it. That’s also where you hear everyday Indonesian.
• Lots of speaking timeIndonesian is one of the easier languages to learn, but it still takes hours of talking. A few minutes a day won’t get you there.

A complete fluency system, not just a speaking app

Our speaking practice is the heart of Teacher AI. But speaking alone won’t make you fluent, and neither will input alone. You need both, and you need to see it working.

So Teacher AI is a complete fluency system. Input grows your Indonesian. Speaking activates it. And we track every word along the way, to get you to real fluency as fast as we can.

1. Step 1Input grows your vocabularyWatch Indonesian YouTube videos and podcasts, and read stories written at your level. You always see how much you already understand, and every word you tap becomes a flashcard. How Watch and Read work.
2. Step 2Speaking activates itKnowing a word isn’t the same as using it, with the right prefix, the right ending and the right way to address someone. Talking with your teacher, for as long as you like, is how words move from “I know that one” to “I just said it”. Every mistake gets fixed, with a Why?.
3. Step 3We track every wordYour passive words are the ones you understand when you read or hear them. Your active words are the ones you’ve used yourself. You see both grow, how your time splits between input and output, and how many words to your next level.

Brand new to Indonesian? Start somewhere else first. Teacher AI works best from about A2, once you can handle simple everyday sentences. Before that, you just don’t have enough words yet for open conversation. So learn the basics with a course like Duolingo (free), Babbel or Pimsleur, and come back when you want to talk.

What it looks like in Indonesian

Here’s what a moment of practice looks like. You answer, your teacher replies, and if you made a mistake, your sentence gets fixed right there.

A card for every word you tap

Tap any word, in a conversation, a video or a story, and you get its card: what it means, what kind of word it is, and an example with a translation. Tap play to hear it.

An illustration of three word cards, rebuilt for this page. On the real card, the wording depends on the word. Below: real screenshots of the web app.

Meet your Indonesian teachers

Three teachers: Nadia from Bali, Rizky from Denpasar, Bali’s capital, and Sari from Bandung, in West Java. Pick the one you like.

• 
  Nadia Putri

  Bali · Indonesian
• 
  Rizky Santoso

  Denpasar · Indonesian
• 
  Sari Pratama

  Bandung · Indonesian

Input: Indonesian to watch and read, at your level

Here’s the input side up close. New words come from lots of Indonesian you hear and read, where you already understand most of it.

Watch and Read are on the web app for now. Words you read along with, without tapping, count toward your passive words. Every word you tap lands in your flashcards. And when you’re done, you talk about it with your teacher.

• Any YouTube videoPaste a link to an Indonesian YouTube video, or an Apple Podcasts episode. We turn it into a page you read along with, new words in yellow. No subtitles? On a paid plan we transcribe it for you, within a monthly allowance. Vlogs and podcasts are where you hear everyday Indonesian, with aku, nggak and udah.
• Suggestions that fitNot sure what to watch? Suggested for you lists new videos from Indonesian channels we picked, by topic, from learner channels to the news, each with the share you’d understand.
• Stories written for youRead writes Indonesian texts at your level, from A1 to Native, about anything you like, and suggests ideas from what you talk about with your teacher.
• How much you know, before you startTeacher AI keeps a list of every Indonesian word you’ve met: the ones you use when you talk, the ones you read or hear, the ones you tap. It checks every word of a video or text against that list and shows you the share you already know.
• The 80% rulePick videos and texts where you know 80% or more of the words. Then your brain fills in the rest from context. Under 70% is too much for now. 90% and up is easy and fun.
• Then talk about itOne tap on Talk about this starts a conversation about what you just watched or read. Retelling it is how new words become words you can say.

Teacher AI or Duolingo?

Lots of people start Indonesian on Duolingo: 1.26 million learners, it says. Good! So here’s how the two compare for speaking, with every Duolingo fact from Duolingo’s own pages.

The apps side by side

The apps, one by one

Where another app might suit you better

Head-to-head comparisons

Teacher AI vs Talkpal · Teacher AI vs Duolingo · Teacher AI vs Babbel. All comparisons.

Other languages

SpanishSpain and Latin AmericaFrenchFrance, Belgium and SwitzerlandMandarin ChineseSimplified or Traditional, with pinyinCantoneseHong Kong, with JyutpingThaiWith spaces between words, and Paiboon+ or IPAJapaneseWith furigana or romaji, and a kanji countDutchThe Netherlands and Flanders, with Flemish voicesBrazilian PortugueseWith Brazilian teachers and well-known polyglotsItalianWith Italian teachers from Podcast Italiano and Vaporetto ItalianoGermanWith German and Austrian teachers, from Lingster Academy to Herr AntrimEuropean PortugueseWith teachers from Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Faro, and Portuguese With LeoEnglishWith American and British teachers, from Espresso English to English Like A NativeKoreanWith teachers from Seoul and Busan, and every dropped 요 fixedRussianWith the stress marked above every wordTurkishWith Can from Turkishle, and every ending fixed as you talkArabicWith teachers from Cairo, Amman and Jeddah, and a straight answer on MSA or dialectPolishWith teachers from Warsaw, and every case ending fixedSwedishPitch accent, en or ett, and nobody switching to EnglishHindiWith teachers from Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai, and every missing ने fixedRomanianWith teachers from Bucharest and Transylvania, and every ending explainedCatalanFor when Barcelona keeps answering you in SpanishVietnameseWith teachers from Hanoi and Sapa, and every tone, classifier and pronoun fixedUkrainianWith two teachers from Lviv, and every case fixed as you talkGreekWith teachers from Crete and Thessaloniki, and every gender and ending explainedHebrewFor Hebrew without the vowels, with two teachers from Tel AvivCzechWith Klara and Lukáš from Brno, and a Why? on every case ending