Roundabout kin terms

[David Gil]

Dear all,

Since I was away from email for a few weeks I missed out on much of this
thread, but I can't resist a couple of anecdotes illustrating
misunderstandings arising due to variation between different dialects of
Indonesian.

About 10 years ago, during the rule of Suharto, Indonesian radio and TV
announced the death of "ibu presiden" ("mother president").  My friends
in Riau province, most of whom were fluent in the colloquial Riau
dialect but not the standard language, were all puzzled -- as was I --
how somebody as old as Suharto could still have had a living mother.  It
was only several days later that they found out, and informed me, that
the deceased person was actually not the president's mother but rather
the mother of the president's children, ie. his wife.

A few years later, I went on my first trip to Irian Jaya, and everybody
I met asked me why I didn't bring my mother with me.  Again, I was
somewhat puzzled by this question, until I realized that what they were
actually referring to was my presupposed wife.  It emerges that
teknonymy is common in many varieties of colloquial Malay and
Indonesian, though not in the Riau dialect, which, at the time, was the
only one I was familiar with.

Best,

David

--
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Inselstrasse 22, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-9952321
Fax: 49-341-9952119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://monolith.eva.mpg.de/~gil/