Indonesian students of English are lucky in that the sounds of their language are quite close to the sounds of English. However, here is a song that focuses on two pronunciation features that are rare in Bahasa Indonesia:

• consonant clusters, especially at the ends of words ending in ‘s’
• connected speech, in particular ‘juncture’, in which a letter is moved from the end of one word to the beginning of the next – very common when a word ends in ‘s’ and the next word begins with a vowel.

In this song we mention celebrities (and a country!) whose names end in ‘s’ in English, but not when spoken by Indonesians (Brian Adam, Julia Robert, etc.)! See how many names you recognise and sing along to Scissor!

Video directed by Saleh Amin, featuring Indonesian AAS scholars preparing for study in Australia.