Dutch soldiers

[Aone van Engelenhoven]

>I find this odd. "To fight like shit" is rather an Anglo-Saxon / Dutch ? /
>English expression. For instance it does not exist in French : to me "se
>battre comme de la merde" would be meaningless. Does Don VAN MINDE mean that
>a similar expression as the English one exists in Ambonese or that it a
>calque from Dutch?

I forwarded the message to Don. The comparative notion "like shit" is not a
Dutch one as far as I know. An other translation coming to me, still based
on Don's observation, is that those Dutch fought by throwing shit (thus
sama as a marker to indicate an instrument) - which I recall that has been
recorded (I don't know anymore whether it were Celts against Romans or VOC
against Japanese or Moluccans).

However, the expected construction would have been something like pakai tai
"use shit" as in pakai gula  "with sugar" (I drink coffee with sugar). How
old is the sama construction in Indonesian/Malay? Has it been attested in
Classical Malay texts, for example?

Salam, Aone

**********************
Aone van Engelenhoven
Dep.Languages & Cultures SE Asia & Oceania
Leiden University,
BOX 9515 2300 RA Leiden, Netherlands
tel: +31-(0)71-5274165, fax: +31-(0)71-5272615

Email: A.van.Engelenhoven at let.leidenuniv.nl
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/tczoao/Staf/Engelenhoven.htm