Belanja, Memasak, Menari, Belajar

Some exciting and fun things from the last few days:

Resource Shopping:
Monday night I went to Gramedia (book shop) to buy teaching resources. Ifra came with me, taking the pete-pete there (what Makassans call the angkot or minibus) and a taxi home… because I bought so much! I think it was the first time in my life where I just picked things up and thought, “Yep, that’s good and useful, I’ll buy it.” Usually I talk myself out of buying something, even if I really need it and it is the reason that I went to the shops.

My resource haul from Gramedia

Cooking together:
Last night I had my first cooking class. We cooked Sop Ubi (Cassava Soup) and [can’t remember the name at the moment, but something very similar to Es Pisang Ijo]. I thought it would be just Kak Herul teaching me, but it ended up being pretty much the whole staff from Pusat Bahasa, as well as my homestay family and Alisa (an American student at Pusat Bahasa who also lives here). So it ended up being a very busy kitchen, but a very fun evening.

Learning to cook (Photo: Kak Uni)

All the bits and pieces

The final product: Sop Ubi

Learning to dance:
As part of my cultural studies, as well as learning to cook Makassan food, I am also learning a Makassan dance called Tari Paduppa. So far I have had two lessons with Ifra and Alisa. It is apparently the easiest local dance, but that doesn’t mean it is that easy for me – a very unco person. But I’m getting there with it and doing the dance will be part of my final project.

The first lesson (Photo: Kak Jum)

Starting to get the hang of it (Photo: Kak Jum)

Discovering new things about Indonesian and Indonesia: 
Probably the most exciting thing that I learnt in my lesson today is that colours can become verbs! For example jingga (orange) can be used in the sentence “Sebelum matahari terbenam langit menjingga” (“Before the sun goes down the sky becomes orange”) and hijau (green) can be used in the sentence “Pohon menghijau” (“The tree turned green”). It has also been really interesting to continue to compare both the language and culture with Java. For example, I have noticed that “the magic hand” (putting your hand out to stop the traffic) is much less effective and people in vehicles are a lot less patient to get where they’re going. 

Variasi Bahasa Indonesia

Today I had my first class at Pusat Bahasa (Language Centre) – my first formal language class since before I studied in Yogyakarta. I was (probably a bit too) excited to learn about some variations in Indonesian, particularly between Indonesian in Makassar and Yogyakarta. I think it is amazing how much variation exists and it really shows how much of an influence local languages and cultures have on the national language.

For example, mbak and mas are used all the time in Java to address people a bit older than you, but not as old as an ibu or bapak (which I am thankful for because I tend to forget names a lot). But in eastern Indonesia (Sulawesi, Ambon, Papua and Nusa Tenggara Timur), mbak and mas are only used  for people who work in service areas like shops, restaurants and hotels. Instead, kak (or kakak) is used in the same way that mbak and mas are used in Java.

So if you want to address someone as “you” in Makassar, in general, the options are kak, ibu or bapak. Anda is only for very formal situations and kamu is considered too informal so isn’t used as often. The happy medium for “you” in Makassar is kita (which in Indonesian outside of Makassar means “we [including the people you are talking to]”). If you want to say “we” in Makassar, regardless of if you are including the people you are talking to or not, you just use kami. I was a bit devastated to find this out because one of the many things that I love about Indonesian is that when saying “we” you can distinguish between who is included or not. But wait, there’s more…  If you go to Manado (in northern Sulawesi) kita doesn’t mean “we” or “you”, but means “I”! What an amazing, and confusing, pronoun!

Learning about the variations has made me a lot more aware of how I use Indonesian. For example, I am much more used to referring to myself as aku not saya, because most times I am talking in Indonesian is with friends. But in Makassar aku is apparently barely used, with saya being an all-purpose “I”. I also learnt that while sudah and saja  are shortened to udah  and aja  in Jogja, in Makassar they like their full words. It is similar with base words and prefixes; I had never really thought about it like this before, but in Jogja often a word can be shortened by “chopping off” part, but not all, of the affix. For example, in Makassar someone might use the base word obrol (to chat) or with the prefix mengobrol, but in Jogja it is perfectly fine to sit on the fence and use ngobrol.

Then there is also a whole bunch of little two-letter pronouns that come from Makassan and are used in Indonesian here, but their use ends up changing the sentence structure. I won’t go into that too much for now though, other than the fact that I was very excited to find out some extra meaning behind a shirt that I bought here a couple of years ago.

What I always thought said "Don't be afraid" actually says "Don't you be afraid"

Sampai jumpa!