Language Barrier

View from my balcony at night

“The town is ok, just be careful of some of these Foochow Chinese. They can be rough”

Lee was from UM. A KL guy. Somehow he got chucked here by the mighty hands at the Ministry. During my first few days here he’s given some good advice like:

“You definitely need your own transport”

 “Food may be a bit hard for you to get, but there are nice places in Taman Harmoni”

 And “Don’t worry, Iban is easy to pick up,”

Well, the Iban language has roughly the same sentence structure of Malay so in that sense is not that hard to understand. The problem for me is of course vocabulary. Over the past few weeks or so, I’ve tried to build up some simple vocab by starting an exercise book. The staff at my workplace was naturally more than eager to help out.

When I first got here one guy told me that as a rule of thumb you should add “ai” to a word to ‘convert’ it from Malay to Iban. For example:

Jalan = Jalai

Makan = Makai

Although this should not be applied to ‘parah’ as ‘parai’ in Iban means 'dead' (A nice little upgrade there).

Of course I started off by learning simple words:

Nadai = don’t have

Bisik = have

Kemik = passing urine

Pedis = pain

Au = aye

So my first functional Iban sentence that I’ve been using in the department was something along the lines of “Kemik bisik pedis?” which in the language of ‘proper’ doctors would translate into “Do you happen to be suffering from dysuria?” (add unnecessary fake posh British accent to taste).
I still have a lot to learn and hopefully I can grasp it fast enough before some serious shit happen, like this one time when I asked a guy:

“Bisik tabin? (fever)”

“Bisik”

“Berapa lama? (I still haven’t learned the equivalent phrase in Iban)”

“Hari Lima,”

“Ooo lima hari...” at which point the M.A. intervened;

“Dr, hari Lima tu Jumaat, bukan lima hari”

“Jumaat? Semalam la!” thank god for that...

At least I don’t have to scream “NYET!!!” anymore (‘push’ in Burmese... I guess).

My Bahasa Iban exercise book. It's got a 'Burung Kenyalang' on it! Proper Sarawak that...

I'm gonna need help with this one. Maybe I'll use it as an excuse to ask one of the student nurses out.. :P

p/s: "Kitak" does NOT mean "us"