The Dutch Connection

I just got back from Jakarta late last night. The trip reminded me of something I’ve been planning to blog about for quite some time now — the Dutch influence on the Indonesian language.

You see, Bahasa Malaysia (Malaysian language) and Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) are very, very similar. The structure is the same, sentences are constructed in much the same way, and most importantly, the core words are the same. No, no, make that MOST words are the same.

But there are certain words in Indonesian that are just… too different. They’re so different that Malaysians have absolutely no idea what those words mean when they first hear it. For instance, there’s the word ‘apotek‘ (sometimes spelled as ‘apotik‘), the Indonesian word for pharmacy. It’s a totally different word from the Malaysian ‘farmasi‘ which is obviously an adaptation of the English word.

So where did ‘apotek‘ come from? My recent trip to Amsterdam and Belgium cleared this up for me. The word came from the Dutch language! [NB: Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony.] Here is photographic proof — a pharmacy in the the town of Turnhout, Belgium:-

Then there’s the word ‘tas‘, meaning ‘bag’. (Malaysians say ‘beg‘.) Again, the Dutch connection comes to play:-

Oh yeah, ‘gratis‘ is the Indonesian term for ‘free’ (obviously also from Dutch). I found that sign inside an apoteek in Antwerp.

There’s the word ‘stempels‘, the Dutch word for rubber stamp, which Indonesians refer to as ‘stempel‘ (Malaysians say ‘cop‘, pronounced as ‘chop’):-

Then there’s the word ‘handuk‘, a.k.a. ‘tuala‘ in Malay or ‘towel’ in English. Here’s a notice that I found inside a hotel room in Antwerp:-

And there’s the word ‘telat‘ which means ‘late’ in Indonesia. Could this be the origin of such word? ‘Te laat‘ (too late)?

Notice that I’m supposed to be talking about the Dutch language but keep mentioning Antwerp and Belgium. This is because Flemish — the language spoken by majority of the Belgians — is just like the Dutch language. And that the difference between the two languages is akin to the difference between British English and American English. Or so I’ve been told by a Belgian business contact.

The biggest surprise for me? When I went to South Africa, it turns out Afrikaans has a lot of Dutch words, as well. It makes perfect sense, given that the Dutch East India Company used Capetown as a major hub for slave trafficking.

See this sign for office ‘kantoor‘ (‘kantor‘ in Indonesian) that I found in a town called Worcester in South Africa…

…’meubels‘ for furniture (it’s ‘meubel‘ in Indonesian)

…and ‘apteek‘ for pharmacy (quite close to the Indonesian ‘apotek‘).

Then there’s ‘saldo‘ for ‘balance’, ‘faktur‘ for ‘invoice’, and the Afrikaans ‘danke‘ which isn’t far from the Dutch ‘dank u‘.

Just as I’ve been unconsciously learning Arabic words through the Malay language, apparently, I’ve been building up quite a vocabulary of Dutch words all this time just by learning the Indonesian language!