Ruminations

Matters of the Liver

There is one thing that has bothered me for some time. I'm assuming that I am not the first to notice or remark on this, but at the same time I don't think there has been enough discussion - let alone reflection - on the matter.

Has it ever occurred to you why the Malays, when they love, do so with their liver, and not with their heart like many other people around the world?

Devilspeak

Think of an idiom or expression in your language that you find particularly colourful or uniquely reflective of your people and way of life. Got one? Great. Now don't you wonder whether such an expression can be satisfactorily expressed in other languages? If so, how would they say it? Is everything really translatable? Do we all share the same experiential existence? To what extent is our view of the world shaped by the language we speak? Can you really know a people if you do not know their language?

Mind (Not Only) Our English

This is a classic. Yet another demonstration of how various dimensions of language can be tapped to express identity. Reminds me of the German-speaking community - was it in Schleswig-Holstein? - which stopped writing their nouns in capital letters to dissociate themselves from the Prussia-dominated German Empire (all nouns in German always begin with an upper case letter). Or how the Bosnians started using the words and pronunciation of the Sarajevo dialect to create a language that is distinct from Serbo-Croat, a language previously commonly spoken in both Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. So much blood and ink have been spilt over the question of language and identity. And I'm not holding my breath that more won't be.

An Equal Language

A friend of mine frequently rails against the numerous pronouns we have in Malay and how this perpetuates the feudal mentality among Malay speakers. For the first person alone, we have several words, ranging from the casual aku to the royal beta. We also have a few words for the second person like kau, kamu and awak, but since it is considered rude to address people directly in the second person unless you know them very well or are deliberately trying to be rude, the use of these words is limited. The Malay speakers' obsession with politeness and social decorum has engendered a situation where the English word "you" could be translated in more than 20 ways into Malay, all depending on the social status and age of the person being addressed.