Indonesian
Idioms and
Expressions
Indonesian
Idioms and
Expressions
Colloquial Indonesian at Work
Christopher Torchia
TUTTLE PUBLISHING
Tokyo • Rutland, Vermont • Singapore
Published in 2007 by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of
Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., with editorial offices at
364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, Vermont 05759 USA and
61 Tai Seng Avenue, #02-12 Singapore 534167
Copyright © 2007 by Christopher Torchia
Front cover’s photo © Jill Gocher
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
LLC Card No.: 2006934300
ISBN 13: 978-0-8048-3873-3
ISBN 10: 0-8048-3873-9
ISBN: 978-1-4629-1650-4 (ebook)
Printed in Singapore
Distributed by:
North America, Latin America and Europe
Tuttle Publishing, 364 Innovation Drive,
North Clarendon, VT 05759, USA
Tel: (802) 773 8930; Fax: (802) 773 6993
E-mail: [email protected] http://www.tuttlepublishing.com
Asia Pacific
Berkeley Books Pte Ltd,
61 Tai Seng Avenue, #02-12 Singapore 534167
Tel: (65) 6280 1330; Fax: (65) 6280 6290
E-mail: [email protected] http://www.periplus.com
Indonesia
PT Java Books Indonesia
Kawasan Industri Pulogadung
JI. Rawa Gelam IV No. 9, Jakarta 13930
Tel: (62) 21 4682-1088; Fax: (62) 21 461-0206
Printed in Singapore
11 10 09 08 07 6 5 4 3 2 1
TUTTLE PUBLISHING® is a registered trademark of Tuttle Publishing,
a division of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
Contents
13. Insults and the Underground
Introduction
Diam seribu bahasa. Quiet in a thousand languages.
A rough translation might be: The silence is deafening. It evokes barely repressed anger, or the haughty indifference of a beauty with many suitors.
Nongkrong. This is a casual phrase, a reference to the Indonesian custom of hanging out, sometimes by squatting on the roadside.
Mengadu nasib. Tempt fate. Countless Indonesians do this, converging on Jakarta in hopes of finding something better in life. Some succeed, many don’t.
These and other idioms offer one of the best windows onto the Indonesian culture. Slang, titles, proverbs, nicknames, acronyms, quotations and other expressions reveal its character, in the words of its people. This book of expressions looks at Indonesia with the help of its national language, bahasa Indonesia. Its idioms describe Indonesians and their fears, beliefs, history and politics, as well as how they live, fight, grieve and laugh.
Indonesian is a variant of Malay, the national language of Malaysia, and many of its expressions come from the Malay heartland of Sumatra island. Indonesian has also incorporated terms from Javanese, the language of the dominant ethnic group in a huge nation of more than 17,000 islands, most of them uninhabited. Hundreds more ethnic groups with their own languages are scattered across the archipelago, and many Indonesians speak bahasa Indonesia as a second language, or mix fragments of it into the local tongue. Still, schools in far-flung regions teach Indonesian, and its role as the language of government and the national media make it a unifying force in one of the world’s most culturally diverse countries. Mindful of that variety, this book offers only a slice of how Indonesians talk.
Although Indonesian is officially a young language, it contains words from Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese and English, a legacy of the merchants, warriors, laborers and holy men who traveled to the archipelago over the centuries.
The Indonesian language was a nationalist symbol during the campaign against Dutch rule in the 20th century.