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Re: Saalangal stuff

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Friday, December 7, 2001, 11:02
On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 12:18:46AM -0500, Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
> We were given similar advice when learning Indonesian-- which also avoids > the 1st per. sing. pronoun like the plague. All pronouns are omitted > whenever possible. When speaking to or about "superiors", there are > deferential forms, though I suspect younger speakers may be getting away > from that.
Hmm, interesting. Colloquial Malay seems to love pronouns, but of course, this is the "rough talk" among buddies or "lower class" people. The use of "aku" and "kau" (short for "engkau"), which are considered rather rude forms of the pronoun, are actually quite favored among buddies and groups of young people. The slightly more polite forms "saya" and "awak" are the common, everyday, acceptable terms, which won't be regarded as rude if you use it with elders, etc.. (Referring to, e.g., your teacher as "kau" or "engkau" is an open invitation for punishment, though recently some more open-minded teachers have come to take it as acceptable when they want to "socialize with the kids".) Now of course, there's also a third level of politeness which is "palace talk" -- "baginda" for the 2nd person pronoun (or was that 3rd??), and I forget what the other pronouns are :-P (Shows how much it's actually used among the common people, hehe.) So far, I've only ever heard these terms used in literature or in formal news broadcasts involving top levels of government. People will look at you strange if they hear you saying such words on the streets, etc.. As regards to avoiding pronouns... I'm not sure if that's a solely Indonesian thing, or just the fact that pronouns tend to be dropped more frequently than in English, when they are understood to be there. T -- War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left. -- BSD Games' Fortune