What's cooking, doc?

In English, (1) somebody who's got a PhD and (2) somebody who's licensed to treat injured or sick people are both called doctor. Bahasa Indonesia distinguishes them: doktor for the former and dokter for the latter. And the abbreviations are different, too: Dr. (capital D) means doktor and dr. means dokter.

So if your name is Philo Sophia and you're a medical doctor who happens to earn a doctorate degree, your name with the titles would be written: Dr. dr. Philo Sophia.

Untranslatable Bahasa Indonesia: Introduction

Inspired by a blog post on maptia.com, I'm currently doing a personal project called 'Untranslatable Bahasa Indonesia', since so far I can hardly find one on the Internet. I'm collecting Indonesian words that may have no exact equivalents in English (or, perhaps, in another language). The list is not exhaustive, of course, and some words may, upon later research, turn out to be translatable into another language--which is good.

The purpose is manifold:

• To me, this is to motivate me to browse through Indonesian dictionaries and thesauri.
• To Indonesian speakers, this is to encourage us to discuss the wealth of Bahasa Indonesia beyond oft-repeated spelling and grammatical mistakes (e.g. dimana v di mana, merubah v mengubah, etc.) 
• To non-Indonesian speakers, this is to celebrate linguistic diversity and to encourage you to find untranslatable words or expressions in your native languages.

As you read the blog posts, here's what I want you to do:

• Help me find more untranslatable Indonesian words
• Help me find the equivalents of these untranslatable Indonesian words

It should be noted that the term 'Bahasa Indonesia' is not exclusive of Malay, which is in most cases mutually intelligible.

How to express the existence of something

English
'There is a book.'
The existence of a book is shown by the fact that it occupies a certain place.

Français
« Il y a un livre. »
Literally, it there has a book. The existence of a book is possessed by the impersonal « il ».

Deutsch
„Es gibt ein Buch.“
Literally, it gives a book. The existence of a book is given by the impersonal „es“.

How to identify an object in German and French

In German:

• Was ist das?

In French:

• Qu'est-ce que c'est ?
• Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça ?
• C'est quoi ?
• C'est quoi, ça ?
• Ça c'est quoi ?
• Qu'est-ce ?

A sentence using obsolete English words

Responding to this post, I made my sentence:

Our mate the jollux was frecking in a yemeles way through the tourist-packed pathways, trying to deliciate by the seashore at twitter-light. We couldn't help but kench; he was just so ludibrious.

'To be One' rendered into French

'To be One' is one of the most recognisable songs used during the Ship for Southeast Asian Youth Programme (SSEAYP) since 2000s. Performed by Indonesian singer Gita Gutawa, the lyrics tell about friendship and willingness to be one despite differences. The original rendition is in English, and I've rendered it into French. Enjoy.

Je vois un arc-en-ciel

Couleurs qui brillent dans ma vie

J’entends des oiseaux-mouches

chantant une belle chanson

Chanson d’amour et de joie

Chanson de paix, d’espoir

Je veux pas que ça s’achève

Je veux que ça dure sans cesse

Bien qu’on ne soit pas pareil

Alors même qu’on prend des chemins divers

dans ma vie, dans ta vie

Tenons-nous par la main

ensemble dans ce monde

Unissons-nous

Le monde sera une maison pour nous tous

qui nous donne l’esprit tranquille

plein d’amour, sans larme

où toi et moi, on peut rire

sans pleurer, tout sourire

L’endroit pour nous, nous unir

Unissons-nous

When learning languages

When learning European languages, it's mostly about declension and conjugation, which Indonesian lacks because it simply uses affixes to make a sentence and reduplication to make a singular noun plural. No genders, no numerals, and (practically) no tenses.

When learning Asian languages, it's mostly about different scripts and tone, which Indonesian lacks because it uses entirely Latin alphabet and tone in Indonesian doesn't change a word's meaning at all.

If you were born and raised in Austronesian realm, you'll know just how difficult it is for an adult learner to get used to those concepts not existing in our mother tongue.

So, kudos to all multilingual Indonesians. At least, we can trill our R's, rrr....

Posted on Facebook on 27 December 2013.

German homophones

Learning German, I can't help but associate teuer (expensive) with French tuer (to kill). Well, something expensive can really kill you.

And German schnell (fast) sounds a bit like English snail. But snail ain't schnell.

Route, root, rout

"Route" can rhyme with "root" or "rout", depending on which bulé you are talking to.

Bajingan, bangsat, kampret

Nama-nama satwa sering digunakan sebagai umpatan.

• Bajingan, dari bajing: tupai
• Bangsat: kutu busuk pengisap darah manusia
• Kampret: kelelawar kecil pemakan serangga

Apa bahasa Inggrisnya ...?

Orang Indonesia mungkin belum terbiasa untuk menerjemahkan kata-kata berikut.

(1)

Bawang putih: garlic

Bawang bombai: onion

Bawang merah: ....?

(2)

Taksi: taxi, cab, taxicab

Becak: rickshaw

Ojek: ....?

(3)

Bantal: pillow

Selimut: blanket

Guling: ....?

(4)

Bak mandi: bath tub

Pancuran: shower

Gayung: ....?

(5)

Sakit kepala: headache

Demam: fever

Masuk angin: ....?

Merci le Robert illustré

Le Robert illustré 2012

Je suis tout à fait fasciné de la totalité de connaissance se trouvant dans le dictionnaire Le Robert illustré 2012. Beaucoup plus d'un dictionnaire ordinaire, il contient des mots français, des noms propres, des dossiers encyclopédiques, des illustrations ... tous sont mets en un seul grand volume. Je ne peux pas imaginer les gens qui ont travaillé ardemment pour ce but commun : préserver toute la richesse de la connaissance humaine en langue française. Le dictionnaire, ça vaut sans aucun doute le prix. Je me demande, alors, s'il serait possible de créer une édition équivalente en indonésien.

DD-MM-YYYY, it's perfectly OK

Just because you're writing in English doesn't mean you ought to adopt the date format practised in the US as such. This habit is pretty common among Indonesian learners of English who assume that the 'date-month-year' format (e.g. 11 August 2013, 11-8-2013) is used in Indonesia, whereas the 'month-date-year' format (e.g. August 11, 2013, 8-11-2013) belongs to the US, hence English. Can I say something here please? The US isn't the only country speaking English as a native language--ever heard of the UK, Australia, and New Zealand? So why must the (American) English usage override the others?

And for your information, DD-MM-YYYY is widely adopted in the world, much more prevalent than MM-DD-YYYY in fact. According to Wikipedia (as of 11 August 2013), the only countries adopting the latter format are the US (exclusively), Canada, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia. So, you aren't alone, fellow Indonesians; you're in the same club with European, Latin American, and North African countries, among others.

And personally, I think DD-MM-YYYY is nicer because we sort the calendar date from the smallest unit (day) to the biggest (year). Using the same logic, YYYY-MM-DD is also useful particularly when we want to sort a number of computer files whose names are replaced by dates. But MM-DD-YYYY doesn't demonstrate that sequential property, unless we belittle the importance of the year.

Below are posters of two concerts in Jakarta using MM-DD-YYYY. But note that DD-MM-YYYY is also common among them.

Being mistaken for a native speaker

This is the second time when I was teaching the first lesson of English, a student asked, 'Where do you come from?' He thought that I came from Singapore.

In another past occasion another student asked--again, in the first meeting of the term--if I was a native speaker. Also, after I ended my presentation in a speech contest in Bandung, juries said I must have been to the UK--I haven't.

These are all pretty funny. My pronunciation may be a contributing factor, but my vocabulary still doesn't cope with British slang at all.

And I do speak with different pronunciations inside and outside classroom--the latter is more relaxed, of course. I'm not to appear posh. But, just like a pianist who hones their skill over time, I need to meet the standard. After all, I love phonetics over grammar, human voice is my playground. What can a phonetician do better than working on accents?

And that's why I won't stop learning French until I'm mistaken for a Parisian. It's not about losing one's identity. It's about playing with identities.

Originally posted on Facebook on 8 June 2013.

When English and Indonesian talk about siblings

English puts more emphasis on gender, having brother and sister but no specific word to indicate their positions with regard to the speaker's age. You ought to add the adjective elder or younger, which is sometimes impractical.

Bahasa Indonesia, on the other hand, values more seniority as shown in kakak and adik. Both words are applicable to either a brother and a sister, depending on their age compared to yours. Kakak means elder sibling, adik younger sibling.

Only when one is to address their elder siblings (kakak) do they adopt different gender words according to their ethnicity or, more commonly, the addressees' ethnicity, e.g. (elder brother v elder sister) mas and mbak in Javanese, abang and mpok in Betawi, akang and tétéh in Sundanese, koko and cece in Chinese Hakka, etc. But in Bahasa Indonesia such differentiation doesn't exist; only kakak means elder sibling.

This difference isn't exclusive, though. Other languages have similar features.

Explaining collocations

There's one day when I had to teach English collocations. The simplest explanation of them, besides the definition 'two or more words that often come together', is a question like this.

'In infotainment, the word prahara (chaos, trouble) is always followed by...?'

Most students will reply in unison, 'RUMAH TANGGA!' (household).

Then I'll go, 'Now, why can you answer it almost instantly? The phrase (prahara rumah tangga) sounds so natural to you, doesn't it? And so do English collocations. There are fixed phrases that would come in tandem automatically, like commit a crime, apply for a job, bid farewell, etc. If you want your English sounds natural to native speakers, make use of collocations.'

Now they understand.

French 'now'

The French word for 'now' is maintenant. Derived from main, hand, and tenant, holding, from tenir, to hold. So for the French, what you're holding in your hands, what you can take control of, is the now.

My preference for British spelling

I was designing an on-line exam on Google Docs for candidates of a youth exchange programme. Before publishing the form on the Internet, I let my co-trainer re-examine the questions. He pointed his finger at one spot on my laptop screen. 'Why is it organisational, not organizational?'.

British spelling is seen exotic for the eyes of many Indonesian learners of English today (note: -ize verbs are actually as acceptable as -ise verbs). It's understandable due to the great influence of US media on Indonesian population that they consider US spelling as the standard norm. To this category belong such words as standardize, traveler, skillful, etc.

Languages I've got to know

For over twenty years, I've grown up in a monolingual milieu. Living in a suburb to the east of Jakarta brings an ugly consequence: I don't have any privilege of acquiring a regional language effortlessly, unlike those raised in rural areas. While my parents do speak different dialects of Hakka, neither of them speak in that language to their offspring, except mere numbers 1 to 10 and interjections. As a result, Bahasa Indonesia is my mother tongue. A Bahasa-Indonesia-only-speaking Chinese man, that is enough for a Malaysian friend of mine to raise her eyebrows. Indeed, both Hakka and Mandarin are all Greek to me; at least as of now.

Despite my guilty feeling due to incapability of speaking the language of ancestors, I've been confident, though, to say that I am pretty much fluent in the language I'm now using to compose this blog post--English. And not just English, but a specific spoken variant of English--Standard British English. This is a particular goal, I must admit, that I have been aspiring to since I purchased the 7th edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary in December 2009. With no exaggeration, I think I just need to get some exposure to more and more colloquial terms, mend some inconsistent pronunciation, and, voilà, the mission is accomplished.

But that's actually still far from the finish line--or, is there? My pursuit revolves around language learning, and human voice is becoming my playground. There's a list of languages I've got to be able to speak, or, at least, to write in. If I am to classify them, here's my language-learning plan.