Dozens of people from around the world were busy preparing food and beverages to sell on a hot Thursday at a university compound in Depok, while others tried to offer food in broken Indonesian.

'€œCome, buy our dishes, they are delicious,'€ said a Korean in Indonesian.

Some distance from the food stalls, a number of foreigners were anxious, looking at sheets of paper, murmuring, practicing speeches.

'€œI am a little bit nervous right now. This will be my first time giving a speech in Indonesian in front of a large crowd,'€ said Yushi Tanaka, a Japanese 41-year-old who has been studying Indonesian for a year.

Yushi and the other foreigners are enrolled in a language course called Indonesian Language for Foreign Speakers, commonly known as BIPA, at the School of Humanities, University of Indonesia (UI).

BIPA has over 250 students hailing from various countries, namely Japan, South Korea, the United States, Australia, Iran, Turkey, Thailand, China and the Philippines. More than half of the students are Japanese and Korean.

BIPA lecturer Rahmi Tri Sutanthi said that the students came from various backgrounds, with some having been posted at embassies in Indonesia as diplomats, others exchange students and employees at international companies as well as homemakers.

On Thursday, the school held an event called Speaking Indonesian Day (HBI), which was filled with competitions such as an Indonesian textile presentation contest, Indonesian speech contest and an Indonesian singing contest.

Aside with the competitions, it also held an International Culinary Festival, in which BIPA students sold foods from their native countries.

Yushi said Indonesian was fun to learn. '€œBefore learning Indonesian, you have to love Indonesia first,'€ he said.

The Japanese man, who once lived in Sumatra for a year, said that because he had fallen in love with Indonesia, learning the language was much easier for him.

Another BIPA student, Eduardo Mariz, a 24-year-old Spaniard, said that the most interesting part of learning Indonesian was understanding its etymology.

'€œI found it fascinating to learn that the Indonesian language was influenced by a variety of languages, including Arabic and Malay,'€ he said.

He said that he had faced challenges forming sentences and using the correct expressions when referring to time, as the Indonesian language did not use tenses.

Rahmi told The Jakarta Post that in general, her foreign students often faced difficulties using the language'€™s affixes.

'€œThey have a hard time using the affixes such as ber-, me-, at the appropriate time,'€ she said.

BIPA program head Dwi Puspitorini said that HBI was held with two purposes: encourage BIPA students to showcase their progress and most importantly, to show Indonesians that the Indonesian language was something to be proud of.

'€œTo be honest, I feel that Indonesians have a lack of appreciation for the Indonesian language. We [Indonesians] are not really proud of own language,'€ Dwi said.

She hoped that Indonesians, through the event, could see that foreigners appreciated the national language and as a result would become more proud of it.

Rosalyn, 24, an Indonesian friend of one of the BIPA students, enjoyed the event and said that it should be held annually.

'€œI was impressed by the foreigners who spoke formal Indonesian better than many Indonesians. People like me have a hard time speaking formally [often incorporating colloquial words],'€ she said.

Indonesian is based mostly on the Malay language, with influences from Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, Sanskrit and English. (ask)

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