Comments on: ‘Ice’ – ‘Cumpur’

By: Angeline

Angeline — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 04:03:03 +0000

yum.. the one thing i miss the most from medan other than my family is ice-campur, esp from the stall in pasar ramai

By: Rachael Nonis

Rachael Nonis — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:24:37 +0000

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

By: Wills

Wills — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:00:41 +0000

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.

By: Elisha

Elisha — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:38:54 +0000

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.

By: marsangel

marsangel — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:04:30 +0000

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.

By: vincent

vincent — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:58:59 +0000

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.

By: CYO

CYO — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:40:40 +0000

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…

By: Betty

Betty — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:22:48 +0000

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.

By: Hubby

Hubby — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:35:36 +0000

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…