Last updated on April 18, 2022
In English, basically we have just one second person pronoun: “you”. Except in a few exceptional circumstances, “you” can be used to address practically anyone at all. In some European languages there are two words for “you”. French, for example, has tu and vous. You use tu when you are talking to someone with whom you are on familiar or intimate terms. It is also often used to address children, even if you are not on familiar terms with the child, or for “talking down” in an insulting or contemptuous way to adults. Vous, on the other hand, is more formal and respectful. It implies a distance between the speakers. It is the “safe” word to use.
Most Indonesians are ultra-sensitive to differences in rank, age, gender and formality. When two people talk to each other, as a rule the words they use for “you” will reflect their view of the relationship between them. Are they social equals? Are they the same sex? Are they roughly the same or very different in age? Do they know each other well or only distantly? All these factors can influence their choice of a word for “you”. Indeed, sometimes even ethnic differences, or vocational differences, or kinship differences can play a role in determining one’s choice of a word for “you”.
And there are plenty of second person pronouns (i.e. words that mean “you”) to choose from in Indonesian. If English has just one and French has two, Indonesian has around a dozen that are in common use, and probably more than fifty altogether. George Quinn’s Learner’s Dictionary of Today’s Indonesian gives 24 words for “you”.
One of the interesting features of the Indonesian language (and of Indonesian society as a whole) is the impulse to relate to people as if they are members of one’s own family. It is almost as if you can only communicate with someone by making that person an “honorary” member of your family.
We have a few remote echoes of this practice in European culture. For example, in the Catholic Church priests are addressed as “Father” or “Brother” depending on their rank and functions, and female members of certain orders may be addressed as “Mother” or “Sister”. Presumably this practice is a manifestation of the idea that the Christian community is a big family.
Similarly, activists in certain causes may address one another as “Sister” (in some branches of the feminist movement) or “Brother” (among some activists for the welfare of African Americans). Again, behind this practice lies the idea that members of a family are close to one another, will support one another and won’t betray one another. At the same time, the use of kinship terms may function to indicate differences in power and status within a community (as in the Catholic Church where a “Father” has higher status than a “Brother”) or that all members are equal (as in the use by egalitarian activists of terms referring to members of the same generation like “Brother” and “Sister”).
In Indonesian, the very widespread use of kinship terms as second person pronouns seems to function both to “incorporate” the addressee into an imagined community or “family”, and to make clear the differences in status that are perceived to exist between addresser and addressee. Here are some of the most common words for “you” that are also kinship terms.
- Bapak Ibu – father mother
- Adik/Saudara – younger brother/sister brother/sister
- Oom/Tante – uncle/aunt
- and many more.
Contributed and posted by ‘The Indonesian Way’, a textbook for the Indonesian language by George Quinn and Uli Kozok.
Picture courtesy of Bapak Dede Syamsuri – Indonesian Ambassador for Morocco in Rabbat – and Ibu Ella Syamsuri.