Sunday, December 8, 2013

Sundanese swear words. Are Sundanese people really that rude?


So I was bored and I stumbled on this funny video. Actually this is not the first time watching this video; the author, Sacha Stevenson is a Canadian girl who makes funny videos about Indonesians very accurately: Her dialect, is very Indonesian - which a lot of foreign people usually mistook, Indonesian dialect is NOT the same as Malay, but in her case, she seems very familiar with Indonesian dialect.

I strongly suggest you visit her youtube channel. Her videos are very good.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about her. I'm here to talk about Sundanese people.
I am a sundanese. I was born in Bandung, raised in Bandung and I speak Sundanese proficiently. Although my parents aren't Sundanese, I consider myself a Sundanese.

Now the thing is, on one side, Sundanese people are very generous in our usage of swear words. Here's a good example:

Among young Sundanese, the word "anjing" (lit. "dog") almost replaces a comma between sentences. Here's an example:

"You know. Last night I went to the movies with my girlfriend, damn that tank top made her sizzling hot"
Say, we translate it in Sundanese casual conversational language between youths:
"Sia nyaho teu anjing? Kamari peuting aing nonton jeung kabogoh aing anjing, si anjing kabogoh aing make tanktop semok anjing."
That's 4 "dog" words in one sentence. I even went to an Internet Gaming cafe once; I hear a conversation between 3 middle school students containing 80 Anjing in 120 seconds.

That's a starter, swear words like "memek" "heunceut" (lit. "cunt") "kontol" "kanjut" (lit. "cock"), violent words like "kecrak" (lit. "smash someone's skull using a blunt object") "bedog" (lit. "slash someone with a machete")  are also used very commonly, albeit less often.

On the other side,

People outside Bandung, and foreign people consider Sundanese people as a very polite bunch of people. Foreign people were startled on hearing how Sundanese people bows, smiles, and calls them "Pak" (Sir) "Nyonya" (Madam).

Some foreign people go as far as telling Sundanese people are trying too hard at being polite. That's what someone told me once.

What foreign tourists feel after they leave Bandung was often "whoa, these people are very polite"

I'm not going to judge anything since my opinion may be biased. But one thing that i want to point out: That's one of the wonders that Sundanese language offers, we have different language branches, dialects and colloquialisms to address different kinds of people. The casual language may contain a lot of swears, but we also use more polite paralanguages to address our betters.

In my opinion, slowly over time that kind of distinct colloquialisms becomes a way for us to learn on how to respect different kinds of people, how we treat people in different demographics and backgrounds.

In the end, to answer my question in beginning of this post, "Are Sundanese people really that rude?" The answer is yes and no. Yes, towards ourselves, and no, towards people who we deem deserves respect.

On a smaller scale, I'm only talking about Sundanese language. Every region in Indonesia has their own wonders in terms of language, culture, aesthetics, everything.

Indonesians, be proud of yourselves.

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