To the Furthest Isles

At the dinner table with some very pleasant company last week, someone said something about Malay cakes that made me think of it as a perfect metaphor for the languages of the Nusantara. Malay cakes, said my perceptive fellow-diner, took a variety of shapes but they all tasted much the same. Now, this could be attributed to the preponderance of tepung or rice flour in our kuihs though three of my favourites, gula Melaka, asam gumpal (Trengganuspeak, asang gupa) and jala mas (jjala mah in Trengganuspeak and jjalö mah in the Kelantan lingo) bear not a trace of flour, not rice nor the other.

But what about our Nusantara languages that spread from the Philippines to the further reaches of Merauke?

When I began this blog many years ago I was fascinated by the title word kecek-kecek that I had to email a complete stranger in Indonesia to ask how they used the word and what it meant for them. To my astonishment it meant much the same as it did in Trengganu and Kelantan with perhaps a little extra pinch of salt added in some other quarters to give it the extra zing. And then there’s sa’ah which was Grik to me until my fellow blogger Tokasid pointed out [see, Comments, below] that in that region of Perak (Grik) it does much the same as se’eh does to Trengganu. And that brings me now to another fellow blogger, the handsome Clark Gable of Mermaid Isle (Pulau Duyong) that is quieter and much saner than the hub of Kuala Trengganu that is across the river. In his Comments [see below] Clark Gable said, inter alia,

"Ade kawang kite gi ke Papua New Guniea dengor banyok perkataang Ganu dlg percakapang hariang die ...mungking jugok dulu org dr situ stak bahase Ganu..guane gamok?"

"A friend of mine went to Papua New Guinea where he heard many Trengganuspeak words in their daily conversation...is it possible that they were the originators of Trengganuspeak..what do you think?"

In the winter of 1998 I caught the train to the university town of Oxford to meet a man named Stephen Oppenheimer, a doctor turned author whose brother R I used to know when I was holding another job in this fair isle. Stephen had just written a book called "Eden in the East" which gave me not a few shocks and more than a kick in the nether area from what he had to say about migration, genes and the languages of Southeast Asia. I shall cut the story short though and not take you through the hour long journey to the Dreaming Spires. This is what Stephen Oppenheimer says in his book: that great floods had transformed our part of the landmass into a long, thin peninsula while pushing out Sumatra adrift along with other bits of the broken jewels that jut out from the waters of the Nusantara. These calamities (there were more than one Flood) caused outward (not inward) migration to the furthest reaches of Austronesia as well as up north along the great rivers to Indo-China.

This may perhaps explain why in Papua New Guinea the word for breast is susu which is Malay for milk but we cannot take too much from there. What’s more interesting is that Oppenheimer, a medical researcher who went to Papua new Guinea to study the mtDNA picture in the blood samples, had this to say:

"The smallest group, found on the south coast of New Guinea, has one maternal clam...This may have originated among the Austro-Asiatic-speaking Aboriginals of the Malay peninsula and then radiated out to Sabah, India, Tibet, Vietnam, Korea and Siberia. Maternal clan 9 is also present on the south coast of New Guinea among both Austronesian and non-Austronesian speakers. Again, the nearest Old World cousin is a Malay mtDNA type from the Malay peninsula. A further five cousins are found among peninsular Malays and among Sabahans from Borneo. All these later links...suggest old immigrations that have become intimately mixed throughout the New Guinea coast and low-lying hinterland."

Now, when I see Mök Long Ttimöh with her face luminous in Bedök Muntöh Belok (lit. "Eel’s vomit face powder") just before bed, I know that that is the mother of the tradition that has spread almost intact to the further isles.

Oppenheimer, S., "Eden in the East - The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia"; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998. ISBN 0-297-81816-3