Today in Bahasa Malaysia Class

Last semester I wrote about my beginning level Bahasa Malaysia class, LKM 100. I'm taking the second level course this semester, LKM 200. While LKM 200 isn't proving to be the enlightening "it's a small world afterall" experience that LKM 100 was, I'm still enjoying it nonetheless.

Today we learned about the prefix ter-.

Ter- can be used to:

a) describe an action done without intention or accidently
b) means "the most" when added to a noun
c) to show incapability of doing something when combined with the word "tidak," which means "no"

I'm the only native English speaker in the class and I find myself being constantly called on. My teacher has mistaken my first name as "Byrne" since the usual format of a name here is Family Name First name. I've figured it's just too late in the semester to correct him without embarrassing him or myself. When he calls on people, it sounds like the name of the person he's calling on erupts out of his mouth as if it were an escape of some sort. It's not, "Ian, could you please answer question number 3?" It's "BYRNE, answer question."

So, back to ter-

My teacher wrote the following two sentences on the board and called on me to translate them into English and distinguish the usage of ter-

1. Dolah terberak di dalam kelas.
2. Dolah berak di dalam kelas.

Teacher: BYRNE, translate the sentences.
Me: What does "Dolah" mean?
Teacher: It's a name.
Me: What does "berak" mean?
Teacher: You don't know berak? Somebody say what "berak" means.
Student sitting next to me: It means to shit.

Since English is everybody else's second or third language, it's common for people just use vernacular English without quite understanding what the meaning of the word carries. We all do that though. I myself throw vittua and perkele around like it's a greeting, no thanks to my Finnish roommates.

I continued.

Me: Dolah accidentally defecated in--
Teacher (interrupting): No! To shit.
Me: Dolah accidentally shit in the classroom.
Teacher: Very good. Next sentence.
Me: Dolah shit in the classroom.

Poor Dolah.

I had no choice but to laugh through each of the "in the class." It was a riot. I must say though, it was actually somewhat liberating speaking publicly about this fictional "Dolah" accidentally and purposefully shitting in the classroom. Nobody else seemed to find it funny though as the next student translated something about someone accidentally eating some cake as I continued to chuckle.

I guess today everyone learned how grown up their American peer is.