Political Animal

Everyone knows and Aristotle reputedly said, that man is a political animal. These are people who have read Aristotle's Politics and used their dab hands to translate their feelings onto a length of material that now carries that pull-quote from Aristotle: Natang. I would’ve spelt it differently myself to give it its full Trengganuspeak fervour, nnatang which, as you know, is our version of the standardspeak binatang, a word that translates as ‘animal’. So we know now that there are two things here on display, animus and animal in one banner.

When I first saw this photo (that has just been sent to me) I was as puzzled as anybody. Is Natang the man signing his own name on his political banner, or is the word directed at another, someone who, in this sordid piece of rag, is the object of their anger, the Natang/Animal?

In Terengganu nnatang is an everyday word used for convenience or in jest to refer to something you just can’t be bothered to name. Mana lah benda nnatang tu? Aku dok cari nngate. Where is that wretched thing? I’ve searched for it everywhere. But if, as is probably the case here, that ‘Natang’ is someone who has caused these Terengganu Aristotelian scholars much anger, then there is something really serious here. This is Terengganu politics at work today, a group of political desperados calling another an inappropriate name, without any sense of tertib terning, falling into the realm of dök jjuruh haröh, and carrying more than just a bit of nanör. And if my informant is right about who the despicable word is directed at, then I would say that this is an even more despicable act that is described in both Standard and Trengganuspeak, only we pronounce it kurang hajör, a phrase that describes their behaviour as beneath contempt, and indicative of the way that they have been brought up, and the mildest that can be said about that is ‘very badly’.

In my blogs I have steered clear of party politics, though I have many times expressed concern at the way Trengganu — and Kuala Terengganu especially — is being developed solely for the tourists and the Michelle Yeohs of this world. When GUiT was launched in Kuala Terengganu last December, we called it our Monsoon Cuppa at the Kedai Pök Löh Yunang as a celebration of the ordinary people. The name of the event took a dig at that other circus in town that was totally useless for the town and even less useful for the common people. We mentioned Aristotle earlier, so just in case these neo-Aristotelains of Kuala Terengganu city want to invoke his name in defence of their use of that unfortunate epithet, then I will say in defence of Aristotle [“I don’t need it,” – Aristotle] that the classical Greek word zoon in his zoon politikon does not really translate as ‘animal’ but ‘living being’; and politikon isn’t really politics( in the sense of UMNO or PAS or DAP or BN) but it was ‘society’ that he was referring to.

But this is what politics (in brackets above) has done to people and, even more sadly, to the people of Terengganu. It has made them — I regret to say — kurang hajör, in the sense of being uneducated or untutored at its mildest, and of being badly brought up, which is the worst indictment in Malay society.

Soon after I came back from Terengganu, in early March, I went to visit an old friend who was ailing in a hospital here. Some of you may remember him as Ustaz Jais, fromer leader of the youth wing of PAS and son-in-law of former PAS stalwart and Kelantan Menteri Besar Datuk Mohammad Asri. It was just before the Malaysian elections, so, just before I left I whispered in his ear, “I suppose you’ll be praying for a PAS victory in Terengganu.”

“No,” he replied calmly. “I’m praying that God will give victory to the righteous.” So I too am praying as my friend did for Terengganu — my Trengganu — now.

Self and Others

Among Father’s friends in the vicinity of the Masjid Abidin was one called Che Ali Orang. He was “Orang”, as I later discovered, because of his disconcerting speech habit that knocked you off your presumed place, requiring you — the listener — to re-orientate. He would say, for instance, “Orang gi ppasör sebetör takdi,” to mean “I made a short visit to the market earlier”. He was, like many speakers of Trengganuspeak (and of many other ‘speaks’ too in the wider Malay world) reluctant to throw in the directly personal pronoun (aku, saya) into his conversation, but he replaced it with one that was totally unexpected.

“Orang kata döh takdi!” a mother would say when a careless child trips over while running around the house. What’s fascinating about this remark is that orang (person, people) is used as a personal pronoun for emphasis in this instance, but it was Che Ali’s insistence on taking it to an even wider embrace that earned him the amusing sobriquet.

Malays generally avoid identifying the self so overtly as in the “I” of Indo-European languages, and are even more reluctant to address directly the ‘self’ of another person to whom he is speaking. Saya or more familiarly aku are of course used and understood in everyday speech, but Trengganuspeakers sometimes hide behind the collective pronoun kita (we) or ambe (from standardspeak hamba, servant), or he would even refer to himself by name rather than use the pronoun “I”. “Mbong nak gi dah,” is said by Embong of himself: “I’m going now.” Likewise, a person speaking to Cik (Mr or Miss in Trengganuspeak) Embong would ask him, “Cik Mbong makang döh?” (“Have you [Mbong] eaten?”) More confusingly, he/she may ask, “Kita sapa bila?” (“When did we [i.e. ‘you’] arrive?”). “Nök gi döh kita?” asks a lady at the well of a child in school uniform, laden with a book-filled rucksack. Are we going [to school] now?

Many years ago, a bored American insurance company executive named Benjamin Lee Whorf took up linguistics as a hobby and discovered that language shapes society. Society, it can also be said, shapes language — how a person thinks is reflected in how he speaks. If you ask a Trengganu person “What fruit is that?”, unmindful of Aristotle’s A is A, he/she will reply, “Hök tu orang panggil buöh ppisang, kang?” Now is that an answer or a question? Or does it show an inner sense of modesty that makes this world look like a pretty uncertain place? Haven’t I seen that before in some philosophical works? This shyness about what Stuart Chase* calls ‘the law of identity’ (Aristotle’s A is A) is also found among the Wintu Indians of North America. “We say ‘This is bread’ but in Wintu they say, ‘we call this bread’,” says Chase. Again, ask a Trengganuspeaker what is that? and he/she will reply: “Tu lah kita panggil ggenang.” That’s what we call ggenang. Ask another for directions, and the reply will most probably be, “Kot tu lah kot!” That’s probably the way.

But in one situation a Trengganuspeaker is certain about what he/she is looking for or thinking about. I’ve heard this said many times: “Höh aku dok mmikir pasa nnatang apa takdi?” [about some lost chain of thought], or “Mana dia nnatang tu Mek?” [about some lost things]. And here the lost physical object or abstract thought is referred to simply as nnatang, the beast. And that brings me to my all time favourite: "Kita lupa dök setarang nök bawök nnatang tu!" or its richer, fuller version: "Kita lupa dök setarang nök bawök nnatang tu, döh nök wak guane setabok!"**

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*Stuart Chase, Power of Words, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., NY; 1954

** "Drats, I forgot to bring that darn thing, can you believe that!"