This reminds me of the Philippines. Tagalog is the national language and my wifes* local dialect is Bisaya or Cebuano or Visayas--different names for the same language. It has no pronouns, and she still mixes up pronouns today.
I understand linguistically the dialects of the philippines represent a blend from taiwan and from indonesia/new guinea, so there might be some etymological overlap. There’s also extensive english mixed into daily use and spanish loanwords.
I would say in the Philippines the languages are very prefix oriented and use a lot of marker words which have no translation in english.
Ng Prutas = the fruit
Mga Prutas = the fruits.
The concept english demonstrates with an “s” has its own word in the Philippines.
Very interesting stuff. I love languages so I appreciated learning about yours and seeing some similarities between it and the Philippines!
Thanks for your comment. It makes sense that Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia are very similar to one another since they come from the same language family.
And my dad also tends to get pronouns mixed up. It used to annoy me when he referred to women as "he" until I remember than Indonesian doesn't have gendered pronouns.
Also an accountant/finance person but I've always enjoyed language!
Here's an anecdote from the Philippines you might enjoy:
The word "Langam" exists in both Tagalog and Bisaya, the national dialect and the dialect from Mindanao, respectively. But in Tagalog it means "Ant" and in Bisaya it means "bird", so I joked that at a dialectically mixed picnic in the philippines if someone shouts "Langam" then half the people will look up and half the people will look down. I really want to know the etymological history of that word, there's got to be a good story there.
Re: the mix from Taiwan to Indonesia, that's how the island became populated by humans! From what I could tell, there were two or three waves, one came from Taiwan, one came from Indonesia, and maybe there was another wave. The islands kept all their ethnicities and languages separate, but there was cross pollination from trade and territory up until the Spanish unified the islands under one flag. the "Austronesian" language family I think comes from Taiwan but there's major influences from the other ethnic groups that "invaded" the island.
The Aeta people are the closest thing to indigenous peoples in the Philippines and to my eye they look like they could be from Indonesia so there's lots of ethno-linguistic things going on there!
From the other side of it, learning Indonesian enough to function day in and day out was easy. Comprehending Indonesians speaking to each other was another thing altogether. Easier on Sumatra with more consistently Malay-based slang. On Java, no way. Too much Javanese mixed in.
This reminds me of the Philippines. Tagalog is the national language and my wifes* local dialect is Bisaya or Cebuano or Visayas--different names for the same language. It has no pronouns, and she still mixes up pronouns today.
I understand linguistically the dialects of the philippines represent a blend from taiwan and from indonesia/new guinea, so there might be some etymological overlap. There’s also extensive english mixed into daily use and spanish loanwords.
I would say in the Philippines the languages are very prefix oriented and use a lot of marker words which have no translation in english.
Ng Prutas = the fruit
Mga Prutas = the fruits.
The concept english demonstrates with an “s” has its own word in the Philippines.
Very interesting stuff. I love languages so I appreciated learning about yours and seeing some similarities between it and the Philippines!
Thank you!
Thanks for your comment. It makes sense that Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia are very similar to one another since they come from the same language family.
And my dad also tends to get pronouns mixed up. It used to annoy me when he referred to women as "he" until I remember than Indonesian doesn't have gendered pronouns.
Also an accountant/finance person but I've always enjoyed language!
Here's an anecdote from the Philippines you might enjoy:
The word "Langam" exists in both Tagalog and Bisaya, the national dialect and the dialect from Mindanao, respectively. But in Tagalog it means "Ant" and in Bisaya it means "bird", so I joked that at a dialectically mixed picnic in the philippines if someone shouts "Langam" then half the people will look up and half the people will look down. I really want to know the etymological history of that word, there's got to be a good story there.
Re: the mix from Taiwan to Indonesia, that's how the island became populated by humans! From what I could tell, there were two or three waves, one came from Taiwan, one came from Indonesia, and maybe there was another wave. The islands kept all their ethnicities and languages separate, but there was cross pollination from trade and territory up until the Spanish unified the islands under one flag. the "Austronesian" language family I think comes from Taiwan but there's major influences from the other ethnic groups that "invaded" the island.
The Aeta people are the closest thing to indigenous peoples in the Philippines and to my eye they look like they could be from Indonesia so there's lots of ethno-linguistic things going on there!
From the other side of it, learning Indonesian enough to function day in and day out was easy. Comprehending Indonesians speaking to each other was another thing altogether. Easier on Sumatra with more consistently Malay-based slang. On Java, no way. Too much Javanese mixed in.
Thanks for your comment. Most of my time in Indonesia is spent in Jakarta, so this is interesting.