Indonesian as a Second Language

Our first interactions with Balinese people were less than positive. There were the immigration official who took our entry visa fee as well as the last of our cash, and the cab driver who, we later learned, charged us twice as much as the going rate from the airport.

But the first of many Indonesians with whom we have had delightful interactions is a little girl named Putu, who waited on us at Surf & Turf Bar & Grill. Putu was our first ISL teacher, tickled that we even asked about some of her words.

Me and Putu

Conversing in a new country's language after having practiced Thai for a month, as we did, is an exercise in focus and restraint. One oughtn't to toss off Thai phrases in Bali, because they're incomprehensible here. If one appends the Thai greeting forms "kah" and "kap" to the end of one's sentences, Indonesians will respond as if to the squawking of a crow. The only time our Thai was understood here was by a serious young American IT specialist, on holiday from California with his buddy. As luck would have it, he was born in Bangkok and astonished to encounter Americans in Bali speaking his family's tongue. Speaking with him in turn helped us to get the Thai out of our systems.

Two wild and crazy guys on holiday. The fellow on the right is smoking a dangerously strong, but popular, flavored tobacco,  shisha, which he exhaled in vigorous clouds that engulfed his entire body. His Thai colleague (left) managed to keep a lid on him, but in return ragged him mercilessly by calling him Pakistani, which he was not. 

An early order of business, then, was learning a few useful Indonesian phrases.  They speak a good bit of English here, such as "toilet," the most indispensable phrase of all for afflicted travelers. But some very handy Indonesian phrases are those for "no"; "thank you"; "you're welcome"; "how are you"; "I'm well/very well indeed/ghastly"; "my/his/its/anything's name is ____"; "I like" (two entirely different phrases, applied to things like T-shirts or to food); "excuse me"; "pretty"; and the innocent-seeming "I'm full"--a potentially embarrassing phrase that can mean either "sated" or "erect." The phrase ti da, da rima kasi ("No, thank you"), spoken with a pleasant smile, is particularly effective against persistent street vendors. Their eyes widen, they smile back a little, then they quickly move on, no doubt thinking, "This person is no tourist. She must live here and have everything that she could possibly require." I can never, of course, honorably use this phrase with the beach vendor who taught it to me in the first place.

In our first lesson with Putu, she explained that her name, like others in Balinese, designates her birth order. "Putu" means that she is the firstborn daughter in her family. Then she quickly plunged us in over our heads, briskly jotting down the words for numbers 1 to 10 in script that looked like Elvish. She approved of our pronunciation, but eventually understood that the concept of how much anything cost, never mind the names of the numbers involved, would remain beyond us.

My beach vendor friend expanded our vocabulary further. Her name, she told us, was Ketut, which means fourth in line. That we have met so many Ketuts in the span of a week is a tribute to either unbounded fertility or total lack of effective birth control.  Gift shops apparently offer giant, penis-shaped bottle openers for good reason. It's an intriguing bit of linguistic irony that ketut in Thai means "oops!" We also learned that fifth-borns are named Wayan Balik or Putu Balik ("Wayan or Putu all over again"). It seems that, because four are about as many children as the language or good sense can comprehend, names after that are recycled. Bali thus has only four names and does not use family names tagged onto the end. As one might imagine, nicknames help differentiate all these Wayans and Ketuts. We often mistook a nearly identical bar coworker for Putu, much to the girl's chagrin. Her Javanese name is Ayu ("Beautiful"), and she probably doesn't much care to be confused with anyone who goes by a name determined only by birth order.

Ayu and us

Some of my gentlest language instruction has been at the hands of manicurists. And when indulging in an inexpensive Southeast Asian manicure/pedicure, I get the benefit of two native speakers at once, with whom I may practice without fear of ridicule. In Thailand, they quietly echo the words I use, many times, to me and to each other, as if to reinforce them. Bill had taught me "G.I. Thai" from the rural northeast, so one high-born Thai manicurist kindly corrected my use of the somewhat vulgar terms "man" and "woman" in place of the more formal "husband" and "wife."  I had, in effect, been referring to Bill as my man. This was okay with me but, she told me, would give the wrong impression in Thailand. Similarly, I had been using the Thai slang for "drink [beer, water, milk]," a looser phrase that equates with "eat [beer, water, milk]." One manicurist taught me the correct term for "drink," with which I later persisted in correcting Bill every time he used the sloppier terminology. In Bali, too, one's two manicurists will speak softly with you and each other, giggling sweetly from time to time. These calm oases are where I've learned other words, such as "color," "pink," "I like," and, of course, "beautiful," with which we all compliment one another lavishly.

In a local sushi restaurant we met a young man named Jack, rather than Ngurah, or No. 2, as befitted his birth order. Jack had spent a few years in Orlando, Florida, which gave us something in common, and while there, earned his nickname from a weakness for whiskey. He filled us in further about the complications of the Hindu-influenced caste system in Bali  One's caste, he claimed, can be immediately identified by one's name. He proudly announced that his caste is that of warrior, or leader, and mildly disparaged those of the lowest caste. In all, there are the highest, priestly caste (like Brahmans); the kings; the leaders or warriors, like Jack; tradespeople or farmers; and the lowliest.

All this quickly became too complex for us to deal with.

We have come to appreciate those with such simple names as Putu, Ketut, and Wayan. After all, we need remember only four of them.