[An-lang] etymology of Kasi(h), and sayang

[David Gil]

I was always rather amused when in Malaysia and Singapore by those 
people who thought "Rasa Sayang" was "their" song, and of course had no 
explanation whatsoever for the -e particle, which is clearly Ambonese, 
and appears as a kind of emblematic marker of regional identity in so 
many other popular Ambonese songs.

On a more serious note, is anybody familiar with any published study of 
the particle -e in Ambonese or other dialects?  It occurs across the 
archipelago, with a range of overlapping usages.  I have tried, with 
partial success, to come up with an analysis of its usages in Papuan 
Malay (which is quite different from Ambonese in this respect), but it's 
a tough nut to crack.

David


On 26/02/2015 22:28, Waruno Mahdi wrote:
> With regard to _sayang_ there is an old Ambonese
> folksong which used to be very well known in
> Indoniésia of the old days: "Sayang kené". See
> the lyrics here:
> http://indonesiamusictalent.blogspot.de/2009/12/sayang-kene.html
>
> There's another wellknown song, "Rasa sayang-é",
> which is perhaps still older, as the following
> youtube film suggests:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4bZhZIYbwk
> see also the more recent:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ki3C_5jM-4
> Here the lyrics of the old version I knew from my
> youth (there are many new versions nowadays,
> Indonesian as well as Malaysian):
> http://lirik.kapanlagi.com/daerah/maluku/rasa_sayange
> except tht the way I remeber it, the first line
> ends in "boleh beta, bertumpang mandi" instead of
> "boleh kita menumpang mandi"
> and instead of "lihat Ambon dari jauh" I have in
> my memory "Tanah Ambon sudah jauh".
>
> Aloha,
> Waruno
>
>
>
>
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>
>

-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-3550321 Fax: 49-341-3550333
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/

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