The purpose of this website is to teach us Indonesian. It started some years ago when I took a computer class at Portland State University in Oregon. My assignment then was to develop my own software project. I chose to build an online Indonesian dictionary. The project notes can still be found here:

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~bule/bahasa/

The link to the first generation dictionary is found here:

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~bule/bahasa/search.php

It lasted for three years with about 30 thousand searches, so I guess it served some useful purpose. The 10 thousand word dictionary was simple in design though:

The second generation dictionary I built last year and early this year received nearly 80 thousand searches. The 5 thousand word dictionary was enhanced to include the following features:

The link to the second generation dictionaries are found here:

http://pho.cydonia.net/~bule/dictionaries/dictionaries.html

The third generation dictionary is currently being built. I hope to take the best of the second generation dictionary and include word family groupings. This will be quite powerful when searching for alternate spellings of the same word. I haven’t found any other online dictionary that does this. I am also redesigning the database to work smarter.

This has been a tough year for me, but things have worked out for the better. You are going to see some cool stuff in the months to come. I am pushing myself in both coding and content to produce the best Indonesian language learning site around.

Salam,

John L. Whiteman

John Whiteman holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Asian Studies from the University of Maryland and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Portland State University. His wife is Indonesian and they have two cool boys.