‘Ice’ – ‘Cumpur’
I overheard a boy speaking to his mum and dad one day … ‘wo ai makan sausage sama french fries.. papa xu mai ok…’ …. I always thought Singaporean mixing English with Mandarin were bad enough (including myself)… well.. some children in Medan possessed a much better capabilities in mixing about 4 languages to form a sentence…
‘wo ai makan sausage sama french fries… papa xu mai ok?‘
Wo ai = ‘I want’ in Hokkien
Makan = ‘eat’ in Bahasa
Sausage = English
Sama = ‘with’ in Bahasa
French fries = English
Papa = ‘dad’ is universal language
Xu mai = ‘go to buy’ in Mandarin
Ok= universal language
it definitely was interesting to hear… I am not the kind to evesdrop on people’s conversation…. But I couldn’t help but heard it as the boy was saying it out rather loudly and it wasn’t just the boy himself… both mum and dad were forming each conversation sentences in ‘ice kacang’ format too…
our boys… when JD was born… I have decided that… Hubby was gonna speak English to the kids, Me in Mandarin, Nanny in Thai while the maid in Bahasa…. we all did our best… by 6 months, at the age when Jadon began to understand stuff …. we noticed that he looked rather confused… being the first and only child.. whenever both of us and the nanny fussed over him at the same time, …. my gosh.. it sounded so weird… all 3 of us were talking all differently… by about 1y.o.. he was picking up the English more… and was definitely confused… I check with doctors and many baby bible books… all pointing to the same direction… ‘kids will do fine… just throw all the different languages with them.. they will understand..’..
right now… the only language we are all having difficulty with … so shamefully to admit… is ‘Bahasa’… we kinda ignored the local Bahasa thinking that he will pick it up as he grows… obviously it wasn’t the case… the only person who seems to make sense with the local language is my husband.. (though 1/2 the time he has difficulty finding the right words himself)… and now with Jadon doing Bahasa in primary 1… he will often turned to me and furiously said: ‘mama!.. why you don’t know!!.. all my friends mummy speak Bahasa..!!’
and yesterday, he came home with Bahasa homework … on the books, he had to name the photos…
1. ‘comb’ = me and him looked at each other… have no absolute clue
2. ‘toothbrush’ = I told him to write ‘tusuk gigi’… and I was utterly confident that I was right…
3. ‘soap’ = we both were like ‘soap too right?’.. but it has 5 missing characters blank so obviously its not..
4. ‘nail clipper’ = I went ‘what’s it call in Mandarin?’
5. etc..
there were about 6/7 questions … and I think I only managed to answer like 1 or something… hubby came home, checked the answers and laughed at both of us like there’s no tomorrow…. while every of his classmates have no problem… Bahasa homework has turned into our family laughing time…
Popularity: 3% [?]
medankota on October 9th 2009 in Medan School
Hubby responded on 09 Oct 2009 at 2:35 pm #
Haha my dear,
You even got “Ice Campur” wrong….
“Wo Ai” supposed to be “Wa Ai”, looks like I need to give you more Hokkien lessons…
Betty responded on 09 Oct 2009 at 3:22 pm #
Oh wow. looks like you have that experience as well,
my boy too at early ages been throwing him alot of baby einstein while grandma speaks mandarin and I in English and baby sitter in Indo. By age 2 no sign of him willing to speak and then he got into speech delay. Since then, I make sure all speaks in indo to him first. He is catching up and to my surprise, he is just mumbling one to ten and some colors like coklat he said brown while yellow kuning so it is all mix up. But I am glad is English is sure easy to catch. For him now is focus on his Indo first.
CYO responded on 10 Oct 2009 at 1:40 am #
My 2 year old daughter is in Spanish day care. Therefore, she speaks and understands Spanish pretty well in the day care. Very funny for a 2 year old mumbling in Spanish when she got frustrated while we have no idea what she’s talking about. Meanwhile, the 4 year old, understands some spanish but mainly English because of the pre-school.
At home, my husband and I force them to speak bahasa because we want them to understand how to communicate with my in laws in Jakarta. We took them to Medan few months ago, they also picked up some Hokkien, but by now they forgot it already,, only ” Ciak pa boi? ” (have you eaten yet?).,.. That’s the only phrase they understand and make fun of everytime when they call grandma.
Funny thing, they also know what kind of language they should use when they meet people. If it is Indonesian friends, they will talk Bahasa immediately, but if my friends are non Indonesians (other Asians,white or black) they will automatically switch to English. Never thought them to how to diffrentiate, but they just know…. miracle of kids brain…
Ps: “Es campur” = I miss that….Yummy…
vincent responded on 10 Oct 2009 at 8:58 pm #
Hi, Very interesting observation of Medanese ( or more specific medan chinese ). IMO, we can get by with english and mandarin in most of part of the world nowadays. So, I don’t see the need to choke the future generation with so many languages. I wish Indonesian had the option to choose what language of medium at school like Singapore and Malaysia.
marsangel responded on 10 Oct 2009 at 10:04 pm #
Forgive me but…. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! This entry is WAY too funny!!! Ehm…hmm…ok, now that I’ve composed myself, let’s see… I definitely think that Indonesian is one of the easiest languages to pick up. My sis was sent to Singapore when she’s just 8. She blended with locals and had VERY, VERY FEW Indonesian friends. She speaks English, Mandarin and Hokkien pretty fluently, but of course she has problems with Indonesian. My brother, who was sent to Singapore at 11, had the same problems too and his only saving grace was that his best friends are Indonesians. My sis then went to Oz, where she knows way lot more Indonesians than she ever did before. She picked up the language bit by bit, although I’m sure she’ll have trouble writing them out. My bro, on the other hand, returned home and worked as a broker, in conjuction with his degree. Of course he has to be a smooth-talker, and that’s where he picks up Indonesian exponentially hahahhahah. So yeah, don’t worry that much about kids and languages. Of course they’re bound to be confused, but I’ve seen a TV programme where they told us that kids can differentiate languages at very young age. And if you want them to be bilingual (shame it didn’t mention anything about learning 3-4 languages), babies at 4 months can start to pick them up. And honestly? I really, really think Indonesian isn’t that difficult to learn. Most kids will have problems with English and especially, Mandarin. Seriously, I learnt to be more fluent in English in about a year after leaving Indonesia (I often tell parents who are concerned with their kids’ English that you shouldn’t teach them grammar like our old-fashioned English teachers in Indonesia used to. Tell them to read more books instead and that’s how I learnt English at the age of 15, a pretty late age. But of course, kiasu parents here being kiasu, no one listens to me although they come for advices regarding English). Mandarin will be the one language I’d be really worried about because both my husband and I aren’t masters at it. And I’ve seen my Singapore friends and sister struggling with it during O Levels, having to memorise many Chinese proverbs and idioms, not to mention how to write them.
Elisha responded on 12 Oct 2009 at 6:38 pm #
My son is now 2 years old. I speak English with him, my husband and father-in-law speak Teow Chew, mother-in-law speaks Mandarin, maid speaks Bahasa, and the rest speak Hokkien. Same thing as the rest, delayed in speech. He understand what those languages but he only speaks English.
Wills responded on 12 Oct 2009 at 7:00 pm #
Tusuk gigi to brush teeth lol that’s so funny. Hhhmm I think we’ll just teach our little one Mandarin at home, he’ll pick English up naturally when he starts going to childcare & school and forget about Hokkien and Indonesian altogether.
Rachael Nonis responded on 14 Oct 2009 at 9:24 am #
Hi there,
I am from Ink Publishing, Singapore. We publish inflight magazines for airlines from all over the world. I am working on Jetstar Asia magazine, the inflight magazine for Jetstar airlines and I would be happy to have you contribute and be a part of our next issue or know someone who might.
Since we fly to Medan our readers would like some inside information from a local resident or frequent traveller to the country and we would really appreciate if you could take some time out to answer some of the questions, sort of like a short write up.
I would like to run a small photograph of the contributor along with the text as part of our format for this section.
If you could email me at rachael.nonis@ink-publishing.com, that would be great. I can give you more information from there.
Look forward to hearing from you,
Best
Rachael Nonis
Angeline responded on 16 Oct 2009 at 11:03 am #
yum.. the one thing i miss the most from medan other than my family is ice-campur, esp from the stall in pasar ramai