Si ganteng: Morphemes

Morphemes

by Kirsten Mills
Student, University of North Carolina at Pembroke, 1998

Introduction

Morphemes are what make up words. Often, morphemes are thought of as words but that is not always true. Some single morphemes are words while other words have two or more morphemes within them. Morphemes are also thought of as syllables but this is incorrect. Many words have two or more syllables but only one morpheme. Banana, apple, papaya, and nanny are just a few examples. On the other hand, many words have two morphemes and only one syllable; examples include cats, runs, and barked.

Definitions

morpheme: a combination of sounds that have a meaning. A morpheme does not necessarily have to be a word. Example: the word cats has two morphemes. Cat is a morpheme, and s is a morpheme. Every morpheme is either a base or an affix. An affix can be either a prefix or a suffix. Cat is the base morpheme, and s is a suffix.
affix: a morpheme that comes at the beginning (prefix) or the ending (suffix) of a base morpheme. Note: An affix usually is a morpheme that cannot stand alone. Examples: -ful, -ly, -ity, -ness. A few exceptions areable, like, and less.
base: a morpheme that gives a word its meaning. The base morpheme cat gives the word cats its meaning: a particular type of animal.
prefix: an affix that comes before a base morpheme. The in in the word inspect is a prefix.
suffix: an affix that comes after a base morpheme. The s in cats is a suffix.
free morpheme: a morpheme that can stand alone as a word without another morpheme. It does not need anything attached to it to make a word. Cat is a free morpheme.
bound morpheme: a sound or a combination of sounds that cannot stand alone as a word. The s in cats is a bound morpheme, and it does not have any meaning without the free morpheme cat.
inflectional morpheme: this morpheme can only be a suffix. The s in cats is an inflectional morpheme. An inflectional morpheme creates a change in the function of the word. Example: the d in invited indicates past tense. English has only seven inflectional morphemes: -s (plural) and -s (possessive) are noun inflections; -s ( 3rd-person singular), -ed ( past tense), -en (past participle), and -ing ( present participle) are verb inflections; -er (comparative) and -est (superlative) are adjective and adverb inflections.
derivational morpheme: this type of morpheme changes the meaning of the word or the part of speech or both. Derivational morphemes often create new words. Example: the prefix and derivational morphemeun added to invited changes the meaning of the word.
allomorphs: different phonetic forms or variations of a morpheme. Example: The final morphemes in the following words are pronounced differently, but they all indicate plurality: dogs, cats, and horses.
homonyms: morphemes that are spelled the same but have different meanings. Examples: bear (an animal) and bear (to carry), plain (simple) and plain ( a level area of land).
homophones: morphemes that sound alike but have different meanings and spellings. Examples: bear, bare; plain, plane; cite, sight, site.

Fifteen Common Prefixes

The following tables and tip are adopted from Grammar and Composition by Mary Beth Bauer, et al.

Prefix	Meaning
ad-	to, toward
circum-	around, about
com-	with, together
de-	away from, off
dis-	away, apart
ex-	from, out
in-	Not
in-	in, into
inter-	Between
mis-	Wrong
post-	After
re-	back, again
sub-	beneath, under
trans-	Across
un-	Not

Ten Common Suffixes

Suffix	Meaning
-able (-ible)	capable of being
-ance (-ence)	the act of
-ate	making or applying
-ful	full of
-ity	the state of being
-less	Without
-ly	in a certain way
-ment	the result of being
-ness	the state of being
-tion (-ion, -sion)	the act of or the state of being

Tip

Suffixes can also be used to tell the part of speech of a word. The following examples show the parts of speech indicated by the suffixes in the chart.
Nouns: -ance, -ful, -ity, -ment, -ness, -tion
Verb: -ate
Adjectives: -able, -ful, -less, -ly
Adverb: -ly

Exercises

Identify and label the parts of the following words as: bound or free, derivational or inflectional, and base or affix. Indicate the number of morphemes in each word.

1. dogs
2. replay
3. carrot
4. inescapable
5. television
6. tenacity
7. captivate
8. unlikely

Identify at least 10 sets of homophones and give the different meanings.
Example: board (a flat piece of wood) and bored (uninterested, weary).

Click here for answers.

Words	base	affix	inflectional	derivational	bound	free	morphemes
Dogs	dog	-s	+		-s	dog	2
Replay	play	re-		+	re-	play	2
Carrot	carrot					carrot	1
inescapable	cap	in-,es-,-able		+	in-,es-,cap	-able	4
television	vis	tele-,-ion		+	tele-,vis,-ion		3
Tenacity	tenac	-ity		+	tenac,-ity		2
captivate	cap	-tiv,-ate		+	cap,-tiv,-ate		3
Unlikely	likely	un-		+	un-	likely	2

The answers for homophones will vary. Some examples are:

buy (to purchase)
by (near)

forth (forward)
fourth (referring to the number four)

heard (past tense for hear)
herd (a group of animals)

lessen (to make less)
lesson (something learned)

pair (set of two)
pare (to trim)
pear (a fruit)

right (proper or just; correct; opposite of left)
rite (a ritual)
write (to put words on paper)

to (toward)
too (also, excessively)
two (one more than one in number)

waist (midsection)
waste (to squander; something that is discarded)

week (seven days)
weak (feeble, not strong)

your (possessive of you)
you're (contraction of you are)

Bibliography

Fromkin, Victoria, and Robert Rodman. An Introduction to Language. 5th ed.
Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Joanovich College Publishers, 1993.

Kolln, Martha, and Robert Funk. Understanding English Grammar. 5th ed.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998.

Hacker, Diana. The Bedford Handbook for Writers. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford
Books of St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Bauer, Mary Beth, et al., Grammar and Composition. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
1982.

Written by Kirsten Mills
Edited by Mark Canada, Ph.D.

What is a morpheme?

Definition:

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language.

Discussion

Current approaches to morphology conceive of morphemes as rules involving the linguistic context, rather than as isolated pieces of linguistic matter. They acknowledge that

1) meaning may be directly linked to tone or stress
2) the meaning of a morpheme with a given form may vary, depending on its immediate environment

Examples (English)

Unladylike - The word unladylike consists of three morphemes and four syllables. Morpheme breaks: un- 'not',  lady '(well behaved) female adult human, and like 'having the characteristics of'. None of these morphemes can be broken up any more without losing all sense of meaning. Lady cannot be broken up into "la" and "dy," even though "la" and "dy" are separate syllables. Note that each syllable has no meaning on its own.

Dogs- The word dogs consists of two morphemes and one syllable  dog, and  -s, a plural marker on nouns.

Note that a morpheme like "-s" can just be a single phoneme and does not have to be a whole syllable.

Technique- The word technique consists of only one morpheme having two syllables. Even though the word has two syllables, it is a single morpheme because it cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts

More examples of Morphemes:

cat    cats    cat+s    catty    cat+y
help    helped    help+ed    unhelpful    un+help+ful
bake    bakery    bak+ery    baker    bak+er
dedicate    dedication    dedicat+ion    rededicate    re+dedicate
rededicationings    re+dedicat+ion+ing+s
Establish    establishment    establish+ment

How does this relate with teaching ESL students? Simple, being able to describe to an ESL student the basic formation of words will help the student recognize how the word remains the same but the addition changes the definition of the word. Lets look at how the affixes work in both English and Spanish.

work   works   working  worked
seem   seems   seeming  seemed
live    lives      living        lived
book    books   booking  booked

Now, lets look at 2 words in Spanish, to sing (canto) and to learn (aprendo)

Canto        cantamos        cantemos

Aprendo    aprendemos    aprendi

Same construct, but different meaning because of the additions made to them.

The best way to remember morphemes is to recognize the two major components of a morpheme, a suffix and prefix.

Prefix - A prefix is a morpheme which can be added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning. For example:
inedible
disappear
supermarket
unintentional

Suffix - A suffix is a morpheme that is added to the end of a word. There are two main categories:
a.    An inflectional suffix changes the tense or grammatical status of a word, eg from present to past (worked) or from singular to plural (accidents).
b.    A derivational suffix changes the word class, eg from verb to noun (worker) or from noun to adjective (accidental).

Now, how can we use Morphemes as a classroom management strategy that will help ESL and EBD students learn vocabulary? the best way is to follow the guidelines for a great strategy I found in my research called lets Morph.

Let’s Morph: A Spelling Program For Grades 3-6

This spelling program can be used to teach all levels of learners in the classroom. It is multi-dimensional in structure so that the teacher can use the list in order to teach the beginning speller as easily as the advanced student. The target age group for this program of teaching spelling through morphemes starts in third grade and continues through sixth-grade. However, using morphemes to teach spelling can be used at all higher levels of instruction.

First, the teacher must use words that have both base words and word extensions, such as

Base Word                     List Word Extensions
1 two                             twin, twelve, twelfth
2 three                         third, thirteen, thirteenth, triple, triplet
3 circle                         circumference, circumstance, circumstantial
4 port                            transport, transportation, portal, imported, support, deport, portable, export, report, airport
5 market                        supermarket, telemarketer, marketplace, marketable
6 form                         uniform, reform, formidable, inform, perform, format, pre-form
7 person                        persons, person’s, personal, personality
8 friend                         friendly, friendlier, friendliest, friendship
9 number                     numeral, numerical
10 part                         apart, partition, particular

Using the example above (#1 two), the teacher would take the base word and seperate the letters tw, then from that point the student would continue to make a list of words that start with the letters tw and have something in common with the base word. Also, it does not have to be the first letters of the word, but a word that refers to the same concept. For example, look at #2 three, some of the words used the th to make other words. Yet, the last two words were triple and triplet, which is another way of describing the concept of three. As the student becomes more familiar with the system of morphemes, the teacher should look for more advanced examples to teach the class. In effect, the teacher uses one teaching tool in order to teach a diverse student population.

Finally, the usage and understanding of morphemes can mean the difference between helping an ESL succeed or fail in the classroom. It is not an easy task to teach the complexity of morphemes to ESL students, but I do believe that by keeping the definition as simple as possible, as well as the examples, any students regardless of whether or not they are ESL can begin to understand the formation of the English vocabulary.

Lexemes and word forms

The distinction between these two senses of "word" is arguably the most important one in morphology. The first sense of "word", the one in which dog and dogs are "the same word", is called alexeme. The second sense is called word form. We thus say that dog and dogs are different forms of the same lexeme. Dog and dog catcher, on the other hand, are different lexemes, as they refer to two different kinds of entities. The form of a word that is chosen conventionally to represent the canonical form of a word is called a lemma, or citation form.

[edit]Prosodic word vs. morphological word

Here are examples from other languages of the failure of a single phonological word to coincide with a single morphological word form. In Latin, one way to express the concept of 'noun-phrase₁and noun-phrase₂' (as in "apples and oranges") is to suffix '-que' to the second noun phrase: "apples oranges-and", as it were. An extreme level of this theoretical quandary posed by some phonological words is provided by the Kwak'wala language.^[3] In Kwak'wala, as in a great many other languages, meaning relations between nouns, including possession and "semantic case", are formulated by affixes instead of by independent "words". The three-word English phrase, "with his club", where 'with' identifies its dependent noun phrase as an instrument and 'his' denotes a possession relation, would consist of two words or even just one word in many languages. Unlike most languages, Kwak'wala semantic affixes phonologically attach not to the lexeme they pertain to semantically, but to the preceding lexeme. Consider the following example (in Kwakw'ala, sentences begin with what corresponds to an English verb):^[4]

kwixʔid-i-da bəgwanəma_i-χ-a q'asa-s-is_i t'alwagwayu

Morpheme by morpheme translation:

kwixʔid-i-da = clubbed-pivot-determiner

bəgwanəma-χ-a = man-accusative-determiner

q'asa-s-is = otter-instrumental-3sg-possessive

t'alwagwayu = club.

"the man clubbed the otter with his club"

(Notation notes:

1. accusative case marks an entity that something is done to.

2. determiners are words such as "the", "this", "that".

3. the concept of "pivot" is a theoretical construct that is not relevant to this discussion.)

That is, to the speaker of Kwak'wala, the sentence does not contain the "words" 'him-the-otter' or 'with-his-club' Instead, the markers -i-da (pivot-'the'), referring to man, attaches not to bəgwanəma('man'), but instead to the "verb"; the markers -χ-a (accusative-'the'), referring to otter, attach to bəgwanəma instead of to q'asa ('otter'), etc. To summarize differently: a speaker of Kwak'wala doesnot perceive the sentence to consist of these phonological words:

kwixʔid i-da-bəgwanəma χ-a-q'asa s-is_i-t'alwagwayu

clubbed PIVOT-the-man_i hit-the-otter with-his_i-club

A central publication on this topic is the recent volume edited by Dixon and Aikhenvald (2007), examining the mismatch between prosodic-phonological and grammatical definitions of "word" in various Amazonian, Australian Aboriginal, Caucasian, Eskimo, Indo-European, Native North American, West African, and sign languages. Apparently, a wide variety of languages make use of the hybrid linguistic unit clitic, possessing the grammatical features of independent words but the prosodic-phonological lack of freedom of bound morphemes. The intermediate status of clitics poses a considerable challenge to linguistic theory.

[edit]Inflection vs. word formation

Given the notion of a lexeme, it is possible to distinguish two kinds of morphological rules. Some morphological rules relate to different forms of the same lexeme; while other rules relate to different lexemes. Rules of the first kind are called inflectional rules, while those of the second kind are called word formation. The English plural, as illustrated by dog and dogs, is an inflectional rule; compound phrases and words like dog catcher or dishwasher provide an example of a word formation rule. Informally, word formation rules form "new words" (that is, new lexemes), while inflection rules yield variant forms of the "same" word (lexeme).

There is a further distinction between two kinds of word formation: derivation and compounding. Compounding is a process of word formation that involves combining complete word forms into a single compound form; dog catcher is therefore a compound, because both dog and catcher are complete word forms in their own right before the compounding process has been applied, and are subsequently treated as one form. Derivation involves affixing bound (non-independent) forms to existing lexemes, whereby the addition of the affix derives a new lexeme. One example of derivation is clear in this case: the word independent is derived from the word dependent by prefixing it with the derivational prefix in-, while dependent itself is derived from the verb depend.

The distinction between inflection and word formation is not at all clear cut. There are many examples where linguists fail to agree whether a given rule is inflection or word formation. The next section will attempt to clarify this distinction.

Word formation is a process, as we have said, where you combine two complete words, whereas with inflection you can combine a suffix with some verb to change its form to subject of the sentence. For example: in the present indefinite, we use ‘go’ with subject I/we/you/they and plural nouns, whereas for third person singular pronouns (he/she/it) and singular nouns we use ‘goes’. So this ‘-es’ is an inflectional marker and is used to match with its subject. A further difference is that in word formation, the resultant word may differ from its source word’s grammatical category whereas in the process of inflection the word never changes its grammatical category.

[edit]Paradigms and morphosyntax

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A linguistic paradigm is the complete set of related word forms associated with a given lexeme. The familiar examples of paradigms are the conjugations of verbs, and thedeclensions of nouns. Accordingly, the word forms of a lexeme may be arranged conveniently into tables, by classifying them according to shared inflectional categories such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender or case. For example, the personal pronouns in English can be organized into tables, using the categories of person (first, second, third), number (singular vs. plural), gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), and case (nominative, oblique, genitive). See English personal pronouns for the details.

The inflectional categories used to group word forms into paradigms cannot be chosen arbitrarily; they must be categories that are relevant to stating the syntactic rules of the language. For example, person and number are categories that can be used to define paradigms in English, because English has grammatical agreement rules that require the verb in a sentence to appear in an inflectional form that matches the person and number of the subject. In other words, the syntactic rules of English care about the difference between dog and dogs, because the choice between these two forms determines which form of the verb is to be used. In contrast, however, no syntactic rule of English cares about the difference between dog and dog catcher, or dependent and independent. The first two are just nouns, and the second two just adjectives, and they generally behave like any other noun or adjective behaves.

An important difference between inflection and word formation is that inflected word forms of lexemes are organized into paradigms, which are defined by the requirements of syntactic rules, whereas the rules of word formation are not restricted by any corresponding requirements of syntax. Inflection is therefore said to be relevant to syntax, and word formation is not. The part of morphology that covers the relationship between syntax and morphology is called morphosyntax, and it concerns itself with inflection and paradigms, but not with word formation or compounding.

[edit]Allomorphy

In the exposition above, morphological rules are described as analogies between word forms: dog is to dogs as cat is to cats, and as dish is to dishes. In this case, the analogy applies both to the form of the words and to their meaning: in each pair, the first word means "one of X", while the second "two or more of X", and the difference is always the plural form -s affixed to the second word, signaling the key distinction between singular and plural entities.

One of the largest sources of complexity in morphology is that this one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form scarcely applies to every case in the language. In English, there are word form pairs like ox/oxen, goose/geese, and sheep/sheep, where the difference between the singular and the plural is signaled in a way that departs from the regular pattern, or is not signaled at all. Even cases considered "regular", with the final -s, are not so simple; the -s in dogs is not pronounced the same way as the -s in cats, and in a plural like dishes, an "extra" vowel appears before the -s. These cases, where the same distinction is effected by alternative forms of a "word", are called allomorphy.

Phonological rules constrain which sounds can appear next to each other in a language, and morphological rules, when applied blindly, would often violate phonological rules, by resulting in sound sequences that are prohibited in the language in question. For example, to form the plural of dish by simply appending an -s to the end of the word would result in the form *[dɪʃs], which is not permitted by the phonotactics of English. In order to "rescue" the word, a vowel sound is inserted between the root and the plural marker, and [dɪʃɪz] results. Similar rules apply to the pronunciation of the -s in dogs and cats: it depends on the quality (voiced vs. unvoiced) of the final preceding phoneme.

[edit]Lexical morphology

Lexical morphology is the branch of morphology that deals with the lexicon, which, morphologically conceived, is the collection of lexemes in a language. As such, it concerns itself primarily with word formation: derivation and compounding.

[edit]Models

There are three principal approaches to morphology, which each try to capture the distinctions above in different ways. These are,

· Morpheme-based morphology, which makes use of an Item-and-Arrangement approach.

· Lexeme-based morphology, which normally makes use of an Item-and-Process approach.

· Word-based morphology, which normally makes use of a Word-and-Paradigm approach.

Note that while the associations indicated between the concepts in each item in that list is very strong, it is not absolute.

[edit]Morpheme-based morphology

In morpheme-based morphology, word forms are analyzed as arrangements of morphemes. A morpheme is defined as the minimal meaningful unit of a language. In a word like independently, we say that the morphemes are in-, depend, -ent, and ly; depend is the root and the other morphemes are, in this case, derivational affixes.^[5] In a word like dogs, we say that dog is the root, and that-s is an inflectional morpheme. In its simplest (and most naïve) form, this way of analyzing word forms treats words as if they were made of morphemes put after each other like beads on a string, is called Item-and-Arrangement. More modern and sophisticated approaches seek to maintain the idea of the morpheme while accommodating non-concatenative, analogical, and other processes that have proven problematic for Item-and-Arrangement theories and similar approaches.

Morpheme-based morphology presumes three basic axioms (cf. Beard 1995 for an overview and references):

· Baudoin’s single morpheme hypothesis: Roots and affixes have the same status as morphemes.

· Bloomfield’s sign base morpheme hypothesis: As morphemes, they are dualistic signs, since they have both (phonological) form and meaning.

· Bloomfield’s lexical morpheme hypothesis: The morphemes, affixes and roots alike, are stored in the lexicon.

Morpheme-based morphology comes in two flavours, one Bloomfieldian and one Hockettian. (cf. Bloomfield 1933 and Charles F. Hockett 1947). For Bloomfield, the morpheme was the minimal form with meaning, but it was not meaning itself. For Hockett, morphemes are meaning elements, not form elements. For him, there is a morpheme plural, with the allomorphs -s, -en, -ren etc. Within much morpheme-based morphological theory, these two views are mixed in unsystematic ways, so that a writer may talk about "the morpheme plural" and "the morpheme -s" in the same sentence, although these are different things.

[edit]Lexeme-based morphology

Lexeme-based morphology is (usually) an Item-and-Process approach. Instead of analyzing a word form as a set of morphemes arranged in sequence, a word form is said to be the result of applying rules that alter a word form or stem in order to produce a new one. An inflectional rule takes a stem, changes it as is required by the rule, and outputs a word form; a derivational rule takes a stem, changes it as per its own requirements, and outputs a derived stem; a compounding rule takes word forms, and similarly outputs a compound stem.

[edit]Word-based morphology

Word-based morphology is (usually) a Word-and-paradigm approach. This theory takes paradigms as a central notion. Instead of stating rules to combine morphemes into word forms, or to generate word forms from stems, word-based morphology states generalizations that hold between the forms of inflectional paradigms. The major point behind this approach is that many such generalizations are hard to state with either of the other approaches. The examples are usually drawn from fusional languages, where a given "piece" of a word, which a morpheme-based theory would call an inflectional morpheme, corresponds to a combination of grammatical categories, for example, "third person plural." Morpheme-based theories usually have no problems with this situation, since one just says that a given morpheme has two categories. Item-and-Process theories, on the other hand, often break down in cases like these, because they all too often assume that there will be two separate rules here, one for third person, and the other for plural, but the distinction between them turns out to be artificial. Word-and-Paradigm approaches treat these as whole words that are related to each other by analogical rules. Words can be categorized based on the pattern they fit into. This applies both to existing words and to new ones. Application of a pattern different from the one that has been used historically can give rise to a new word, such as older replacing elder (where older follows the normal pattern of adjectival superlatives) and cowsreplacing kine (where cows fits the regular pattern of plural formation).

[edit]Morphological typology

Main article: Morphological typology

In the 19th century, philologists devised a now classic classification of languages according to their morphology. According to this typology, some languages are isolating, and have little to no morphology; others are agglutinative, and their words tend to have lots of easily separable morphemes; while others yet are inflectional or fusional, because their inflectional morphemes are "fused" together. This leads to one bound morpheme conveying multiple pieces of information. The classic example of an isolating language is Chinese; the classic example of an agglutinative language is Turkish; both Latin and Greek are classic examples of fusional languages.

Considering the variability of the world's languages, it becomes clear that this classification is not at all clear cut, and many languages do not neatly fit any one of these types, and some fit in more than one way. A continuum of complex morphology of language may be adapted when considering languages.

The three models of morphology stem from attempts to analyze languages that more or less match different categories in this typology. The Item-and-Arrangement approach fits very naturally with agglutinative languages; while the Item-and-Process and Word-and-Paradigm approaches usually address fusional languages.

The reader should also note that the classical typology mostly applies to inflectional morphology. There is very little fusion going on with word formation. Languages may be classified as synthetic or analytic in their word formation, depending on the preferred way of expressing notions that are not inflectional: either by using word formation (synthetic), or by using syntactic phrases (analytic).

Indonesia's young entrepreneurs bring creative spark

Forget salaries and office hours. A growing number of young people are finding a niche in the market and learning along the way.

By Cempaka Kaulika for Khabar Southeast Asia in Jakarta

November 02, 2012

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Every year, new graduates struggle to enter the employment market. Getting a steady job at a good company is not easy, due to a simple fact: there are more jobseekers than jobs.

Muhammad Yukka Harlanda, 24 (second from right), the owner of Brodo Footwear, stands with his business partners at the Pasar Indonesia event in Jakarta on October 3rd-7th. To other young people who dream of starting a business, Yukka says: "Don't think too much. Just get started, and learn by doing." [Photos by Cempaka Kaulika/Khabar]

Brigita Elita, 23 (left), and her mother display handmade accessories that use traditional beadwork techniques of Kalimantan. Brigita aims to preserve a precious family tradition and maintain a high quality product.

Giffarin Rindiwandana, 23, designs casual-wear shirts that incorporate batik elements, giving the venerable Indonesian textile a fresh, youth-oriented use. Her advice to potential entrepreneurs: "just be confident and choose a business you like, suited to your passion".

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But there is another route to earning a living while enjoying creative fulfillment: entrepreneurship. Many young people are already doing it.

"Don't think too much and be afraid to start. Just get started, and learn by doing," Muhammad Yukka Harlanda, 24, the owner of Brodo Footwear, told Khabar Southeast Asia. His fledgling business recently reached an important landmark, selling its 500th pair of shoes.

While studying civil engineering at the Bandung Institute of Technology, Yukka was inspired by Bandung's creative manufacturing environment, and decided to try shoe making.

"I did some research on Indonesia's potential industry, and the answer is creative industry. I choose shoes, because shoe sellers are still rare, and we do love shoes. So we felt we are on the right path," he said.

"When I was a student, there was a mindset that we have to get a high GPA score and aim to get a great job. But nowadays, independent business ventures are popping up, especially in the middle class. Economic conditions are strong now in Indonesia," he added.

Yukka's wares were on display at Pasar Indonesia (Indonesia Market) event at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) from October 3rd through 7th. Some 30,000 visitors browsed 171 booths and displays at the event, sponsored by Bank Mandiri to promote small businesses and Indonesian products. A total of Rp. 675 million ($70,250) changed hands each day.

Batik-based wear for the younger generation

Giffarin "Giffa" Rindiwandana, 23, was also at the trade fair. She also found her entrepreneurial calling while a student. In her third semester at the Bandung Institute of Technology, where she studied textile craft design, she and a friend began to make batik jackets.

They were a hit: their peers snapped them up, and so did Alun-Alun Indonesia, a retailer of Indonesian culture-based products.

"Along the way, my friend and I had a different vision and mission, so I developed my own brand," she told Khabar. "From the beginning, I was interested in Indonesian textiles. I had an idea to make shirts with batik motifs. It is more casual for daily wear."

After three years in business, she continues to sell to Alun-Alun Indonesia and fields orders from individuals and companies. She also enjoys the freedom of structuring her own work hours.

Giffa urged other young people to try their hand at business.

"Just be confident and choose a business which you like, suited to your passion," she said. "You should commit to your business, and don't despair. You can also promote your product through social media, it is very helpful."

Preserving a traditional craft for a new era

Meanwhile, 23-year-old Brigita Elita is carrying on a family tradition: beadwork. The native of Pontianak, Kalimantan learned to make bead accessories and outfits with Dayak design motifs from her mother and grandmother.

"From childhood, I was exposed to beading and learned how to make beaded accessories. I want to preserve the culture of beading, especially in Kalimantan itself, because only elderly people do beading there," she said.

Through her business, Bead House (Rumah Manik), she wants to bring her intricate, handmade accessories to a larger audience. And her goal is to preserve the high quality of her products.

"Maybe consumers can get a cheaper price, but the quality is not good. We still keep product quality, and our fixed price," she says.

Workshops teach business skills

By hosting Pasar Indonesia, Bank Mandiri hopes to bring producers together with potential distributors, and to create an opportunity for formation of strategic partnerships among fledgling businesses. It provided the venue, booth space, and advertising for the event, which was free of charge for both entrepreneurs and visitors.

Simultaneously, the bank is running entrepreneurship workshops at 13 universities and 12 cities in Indonesia, attended by some 26,300 students from elementary school to university level, officials said.

"We are delighted with coaching and mentoring programmes conducted by Bank Mandiri over the years. Some of the partners we managed have built significant businesses," said President Director of Bank Mandiri Zulkifli Zaini.

For Yukka, the footwear manufacturer, the horizons continue to widen. After initially trying to market his products in retail outlets, he is focused on online sales, targeting 19 to 24-year-old consumers.

"We are still very young and don't have a business background. So we will continue to learn the science of business, especially practical knowledge of business. We are learning from our mistakes, and learning by doing," he said.

Si ganteng

Selasa, 21 Mei 2013