Monkeys and Cars
I have this strange fascination with westerners who try to learn the habits of the locals, in particular the language. I’m still amazed by Americans who manage to pick up Singlish or Indonesian language while staying in Singapore or Indonesia.
One of my uncles told me this story while I was at my grandma’s place this afternoon.
You see, at my place, public transport means cars, usually vans with the rear compartment being modified such that the passengers face each other, much like in the MRT. In local lingo, we call these cars “angkot”, short for “angkutan kota”, literally “city transport”. They are popular among the locals because of the relatively cheap fare for both short and long distances.
And so there was a time when a westerner hailed an angkot near my place. The moment he boarded, the driver said in Sundanese, which is the local language, to his friend, presumably the conductor: “Eta aya monyet naek angkot”, which means “There’s a monkey boarding the angkot“.
So all was well, until the monkey wanted to alight.
The locals usually just say “kiri”, which literally means “left”, or sometimes “depan kiri” or “payun kiri”, both of which literally means “in front, left” to signal the driver that they want to alight. The reason for this is because the kerb is to the left, so naturally the passenger wants the angkot to go to the left and let him alight.
The driver probably expected the monkey to say “stop” (i.e. in English) or tap the driver to signal that he wanted to alight.
Imagine his rude shock as the monkey said in fluent Sundanese, “Punten, ieu monyet bade turun”, which literally means “Excuse me, this monkey wants to alight”.