Agronesia

The Indonesian language has this weird construction of phrases that seem like verb phrases but can actually be noun phrases. For example, the phrase “makan malam” (literally “to night-eat”) looks like a verb phrase, and it is indeed so in the example sentence “Kemarin saya makan malam.” (I ate dinner yesterday). However it can also mean the noun phrase “dinner”, such as in the sentence “Makan malamnya sangat sederhana.” (The dinner was very modest). Using the standard grammar to change a verb to noun, one expects it to be “makanan malam” (night food) which isn’t the case.

Another example is “korek kuping” which literally means “scratch ear”. It can indeed mean so such as in the sentence “Korek kuping dulu sana!” (Go clean your ears!). However it can also mean “cotton buds”, such as in the sentence “Korek kupingnya gede-gede.” (The cotton buds are large). It isn’t “pengorek kuping” (ear scratcher).

If we allow this construction to be used generally, then we would have “jaga gawang” instead of “penjaga gawang” (goalkeeper), “bunuh berantai” instead of “pembunuh berantai” (serial killer), and “masak Jepang” instead of “masakan Jepang” (Japanese food). I think that would be quite a nice idea, because then we would be saved from typing the nominalizer :).

Tags: bahasa indonesia, indonesian language

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 7:19 am by Agro Rachmatullah and is filed under language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.