Month: February 2005

This weekend we acted like good little tourists and did a couple of recommended touristy things around KL.  On Saturday we visited the Muzium Negara (National Museum), where Malaysian Tourism Board and Ministery for Tourism, Culture, and Antiquities officials have constructed a clean, simple, and air-conditioned summary of Malaysian culture and traditions.  We kid, we kid.  It was actually pretty cool to see all of the different cultural materials from the different ethnic groups that have combined to make multicultural Malaysia.  We did get to see that the traditional description of Malaysian culture as divided between Malay, Chinese, and Indian is really far too simplistic and inaccurate.  Someday soon we’ll take the time to break down all of the major cultural groups that we can think of, which certainly number to at least six, and probably should include more.

The museum also had some pretty cool examples of Malaysian natural history and wildlife.  Malaysia, to put it simply, has some pretty crazy tropical beasts, just like Indonesia did.  We saw a mounted bat known as a "Flying Fox" in Malay that has a wing-span of 1.9 meters, which is noticeably wider than we are tall.  Luckily, it does not have a taste for blood–it likes fruit.  We also saw a walking-stick insect that was 12 inches long, not including the legs.  That’s a big bug.

The final museum bit was the Museum of Malay Civilizations, which links the Malay racial-type  throughout most the Malaysian-Indonesian archipelago to other related peoples from South Africa and Madagascar in the west, south to Western Australia, north to Taiwan, and to Easter Island in the east.  Some other time we’ll discuss the very fascinating politics of Malay culture and "race," both comparatively between Malaysia and Indonesia and in the world writ large.

Yesterday we followed the advice of our Lonely Planet Tourbook and did what they called a Chinatown Walk, walking through the areas of KL traditionally inhabited by Chinese Malaysians and their descendants.  It was very neat to see.  Of course, within Chinatown, you can also find one of the biggest mosques in Malaysia, the biggest Hindu temple in Malaysia, and other good Chinese things.  We got some great pictures that we will post as soon as we get our internet situation settled!

That means "languages."  In Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu, you form plurals by just doubling the noun.  Very convenient–no other rules to remember.  Although it can be difficult with more complicated words like keberangkatan.

Since we’ve been here, we’ve learned that Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu are not quite as identical as we thought.  There are lots of little differences, and a couple huge differences, so we’ve been muddling through.  It’s funny that everytime we open our mouth, people immediately know that we learned Indonesian first and are now trying to make the switch to Melayu.  In terms of grammar and syntax and rules, everything is the same, so that’s nice.  Pronunciation is almost identical, but there are a couple of differences.  At the end of words, the vowel a (like "ah") turns into a sound that’s sort of like the u in "put."  So phrases like apa ada (AH-pah AH-dah, or "what’s up?) turn into something like apu adu.  It sounds funny to us, and when we say it we often giggle, leaving Malays wondering what’s wrong with us.

In a lot of cases, one letter in a word will change.  Often u turns to o, but sometimes the other way around.  So rusak (broken) turns to rosak and kerupuk turns to keropok, but obat turns to ubat. That’s not so hard, though, and we’re figuring things out.

In certain cases, there are different words in Indonesian and Melayu.  The best example is cakap (to speak), which is berbahasa (to engage in language) or bilang (to speak) in Indonesian.  Other examples include instances where word that has been borrowed from Dutch into Indonesian is still the original proto-Malay in Melayu, like mobil (car) in Indonesian but kendaraan in Melayu; more often a word has been borrowed from English into Melayu but not from Dutch into Indonesian, like loket (counter) in Indonesian being kaunter in Melayu or berijin (licensed) in Indonesian being lesen in Melayu.  You just have to practice these.

The hardest part is when a word in Indonesian has a different meaning in Melayu.  This leads to funny interactions.  The worst is the Indonesian pair boleh (may; to be permitted to) and bisa (can; to be able to) which have the exact opposite meanings in Melayu.  We are perenially wondering why Malaysians are telling us that it’s very cool that we are allowed to speak Melayu.  Then there is "to want," which is ingin or mau in Indonesian but hendak in Melayu.  This often gets shortened to nak.  In Indonesian, nak is a casual way to say "no," more often pronounced as ndak.  Other ones just leave us puzzled.  The word lumayan means "OK" or "not bad" in Indonesian, but means something along the lines of "great" or "handsome" in Melayu.  The word enak in Indonesian means "delicious" or "comfortable", but if you want to say "comfortable" in Melayu, you better use the word nyaman, or your taxi driver will wonder why you’re telling him that it’s very delicious to ride in a cab.  (This happened the other day.)