"It is big."
Translation:Ia besar.
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Itu besar ... itu = that, the it. Ia besar = he/she is big. I thought their translation was wrong so I asked my Indo wife and she agreed.
"dia" and "ia" are not synonyms.
Please see the following topic for more info:
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/28585404
No, Duolingo is not wrong. It's a rare use, so it makes you confused, but this sentence is very interesting, as rare uses are also part of the language.
Grammatically, it's not wrong at all.
From the Reddit specialized in Indonesian language:
" [Dia and Ia are] mostly interchangeable, except :
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[Ia is always a subject pronoun, while Dia can be used as an object, Saya suka dia, I love him/her. ]
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Ia can't be used as object after verb/preposition : "Aku cinta dia" is valid, "Aku cinta ia" isn't. "Hadiah dari dia" is valid, "Hadiah dari ia" isn't.
Dia can only be used for person. "Bonekaku yang cantik, ia menemaniku belajar" is valid, "Bonekaku yang cantik, dia menemaniku belajar" isn't.
[This sentence shows that you can't use "dia" for an inamate objet, for instance a car of a doll, so Dia is only he/she and not it, at least not an inamate "it" (so, it can't be "it", except when talking about baby and animals as they are also living beings),
but you can still use "ia" for he, she AND it.]
In spoken conversation, ia risk the listener mistaking it for iya, so people rarely use ia. For non-person, we just usually mention the name directly."