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

Roger Mills wrote:

>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!

OK, this is actually Bahasa Pasar ("Marketspeak", a cruder, colloquial,
less polite form of the Malay language), but I like it because you'd
hardly use formal, gentlemanly correct Bahasa Malaysia when you say
something like that :-P

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_.
kau = contraction of _engkau_, "you". _engkau_ is the least formal form
  of the 2nd person pronoun, and _kau_ is considered quite slangish.
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
aku = least formal form of "I". _Saya_ is more polite, tho not formal.
gila = crazy, as before.
lagi = again. Roger's using of _sekali lagi_ gives more of the feeling
  of "if you dare to call me crazy *one more time*, ..."; my version
  above has the nuance of "if you ever say that again...". Roger's
  version has a strong emphasis on "one more time"; usually _lagi_ is
  sufficient to convey the meaning.
*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.
akan = future tense marker
mata = eye
lain = other
*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.

In this case I decided to put the possessive _kau_ after the modifier
_lain_, because otherwise it sounds a bit too ... polite(?). "Mata kau
yang lain" is a bit verbose, but that's just IMHO :-) Either one will
work fine in this context.


T

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