Learn Indonesian with short stories

Stories to read in Indonesian, with the English beside each paragraph. They open in the browser, with no account needed, and each free one is also a free Indonesian–English ebook for Kindle, Kobo or any e-reader: downloading needs a free account, no payment (which file to pick).

Open the Indonesian–English library, where you can search the stories and filter them by level.

Want to hear it too? Indonesian stories with audio are narrated, free, with a speed control.

By level:

• Beginner (A1–A2): Easy Indonesian short stories for beginners, with English translation · 172 stories
• Intermediate (B1–B2): Intermediate Indonesian short stories, side by side with English · 192 stories
• Advanced (C1–C2): Advanced Indonesian stories, with the English alongside · 34 stories

Every story here carries its level on the Common European Framework, from A1 for beginners to C1 and beyond, so the library works as a set of Indonesian graded readers, most of them free: start at the level where you understand most of a page, and move up when the English beside it is something you check only now and then.

Indonesian is one of the most approachable languages to read. It uses the Latin alphabet, is spelled almost exactly as it sounds, and its grammar is gentle: verbs do not change for person or tense, nouns have no gender, and there are no articles.

What slows readers down is the way one root grows into many words: baca (read) becomes membaca, pembaca, bacaan, each with its own job. With the English beside each paragraph, you can see what each form means in the sentence.

For Indonesian speakers, a parallel text is a way into books in English without reaching for a dictionary every few lines. Read the English and look across to the Indonesian when an idiom, a phrasal verb or a tense doesn’t land.

It works for bilingual families too: one book, two languages on the same page, so a parent and a child can each follow in the language they read best.

398 English stories in the library have Indonesian alongside: Belajar bahasa Inggris dengan cerita pendek.

Long out of copyright and easy to find as EPUBs. Any of them makes a good first Indonesian–English parallel text:

• Hikayat Hang Tuah, Anonymous
• Sejarah Melayu, Anonymous
• Hikayat Si Miskin, Anonymous
• Gurindam Dua Belas, Raja Ali Haji

Or use a book you already own: the method works best with something you actually want to read. See how to read a parallel text to get the most from it.