Malay Moerphemes

I received this spam e-mail from a company advertising "Biogenous silica for Hot Metal Insulation in Ladle" and the e-mail reads "...we manufacture biogenous silica in pellets and powder form. This silica is used in steel mills for insulation of hot metal in ladle, tundish and slab caster. Please feel free to drop us a line for your requirements..." I have seen so many spam emails but this one takes the cake. I just can't figure out why this company would send one to me. Maybe what went on in their minds was something along the line '...aah Bruneians, they are rich and foolish enough to buy anything...'

That entry up there has got nothing to do about today's entry of which I am having great difficulty. I am not often stumped for ideas, there are a million things to write about Brunei but tonight I am just stumped. Maybe I will just do what Ranz does, declare one day as a blog-free day, so that we can recharge.

So to those who crave for something to read from this blogsite, I give you a very old entry which I published on bruneiresources.spaces.msn.com way back on 25th January about penjodoh bilangan or in English known as measure words. Wikipedia defines measure words as words that are used in combination with a number to indicate the count of nouns. An example is a herd of cattles. But I found the Malay ones more interesting and extremely difficult to translate some of the malay 'penjodoh bilangan'. My efforts at loosely translating the following 'penjodoh bilangan':

sekaki payung - a foot of umbrella?
sebuku roti - a book of bread?
sebantal roti - a pillow of bread?
sebentuk cincin - a shape of ring?
sepucuk pistol - a bud of pistol?
sepucuk surat - a bud of envelope?
sepapan petai - a plank of petai?
serawan pukat - a sad of nets?
seurat rambut - a vein of hair?
sepuntung rokok - a stump of cigarette?
sekawan gajah - a friend of elephants?

I came across some rather unusual ones when researching for this blog in Malay. For instance do you know that you can use 'sepangsa durian' - apparently it refers to parts of a fruit; or 'setongkol jagung' or 'segugus kunci' or 'seberkas kayu' or 'seangkatan kapal'. I don't remember studying so many when I was at school but the few that I remember are not as hillarious sounding as they are now.

So the next time you feel like speaking English, try Malay. You will be losing out on so much otherwise.

Comments

Anonymous said…
hope its not too late. happy bday!!
Thursday, July 13, 2006 3:43:00 PM
Anonymous said…
In English, it's a murder of crows for sekumpulan burung gagak. Weirder!
Thursday, July 13, 2006 8:23:00 PM
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