Re: The "If you call me insane again..." page, at long last!

H.S.Teoh wrote:


>Roger Mills wrote:
(BTW apologies for letting the orignal post go out in UTF-7)
>
>>Bahasa Indonesia:  Kalau kamu sebut saya gila sekali lagi, akan makan
>matamu yang lain!
>
>>Non-native, of course; but not too bookish I think.  Follows the English
>>word order quite closely. Of note:  se-kali 'one-time', lagi 'more,
>again';
>>pronoun 'I' unnecessary in the 2nd clause; akan 'future tense marker',
>>mata-mu 'eye-your', yang 'relative marker', lain 'other'.   (kamu and -mu
>>are familiar forms; the {e}'s in this case are all [@] )
>
>Well, I don't know Indonesian per se, but "sebut" and "kamu" sounds
>rather formal and bookish :-P
>In Bahasa Malaysia, I'd say something like:
>Jika kau kata aku gila lagi, aku akan makan mata lain kau!

One of the problems of being a foreigner in Indonesia-- I never had occasion
to use the familiar forms

>Gloss:
>Jika = "if", same as _kalau_ in Roger's version -- in fact, the word
>  _jikalau_ means the same thing, and probably was the origin of _jika_
>  and _kalau_.
Quite so. I think Kalau is more common in Indonesia.

>kau = contraction of _engkau_, "you". _engkau_ is the least formal form
>  of the 2nd person pronoun, and _kau_ is considered quite slangish.
Right, I plumb forgot about engkau/kau. (Same with aku) Come to think of it,
that may be the preferred singular, with "kamu" being plural, when used at
all.  But I'm hazy on this.
(In fact, young speakers were starting to use 'yu' when I was there,
probably due to English lessons, though it has some history in Austronesian
too)

>kata = "say". This is the normal word for saying; "sebut" to me seems
>  more formal, like "utter" or "speak" in a formal sense. But of course,
>  conventions in Indonesia might be slightly different :-P
I debated about kata, but decided to go with the dictionary's examples, with
sebut.
Would _sebutkan_ sound any better to you?  Seems too formal for the occasion
IMO.
(snips)

>*Side-note* I suppose Indonesian has slightly different conventions, but
>in Malay, it'd sound rather odd not to include the 1st person subject
>in the second clause.
Actually, my original feeling was to omit all pronouns.

>*Another side-note* the second _kau_ in the sentence is actually *not*
>a contraction of _engkau_ per se; it's the possessive particle -kau,
>usually suffixed to the modified word, but sometimes can be detached,
>as I did here.
Definitely not Indonesian usage.  The 2d pers. familiar possessive is -mu,
not detachable.  NOUN engkau might be possible; I think not NOUN kau-- but
as I said, these familiar pronouns got short shrift from my teachers.


"Mata kau yang lain" is a bit verbose, but that's just IMHO :-) Either one
will
>work fine in this context.
I think "yang lain" makes it totally clear that it's 'the _other_ eye'.
"matamu lain" could be interpreted as "another of your eyes"...but I could
be wrong.

Minor but interesting variations.  Thanks