I’ll never understand how Westerners get away with calling their parents by their names without getting spanked as children. Here in Asia, we put so much emphasis on seniority. It is a custom to respect your elders, and in some countries, to honor your ancestors. This custom is inked deep into our languages too. In East Asia countries, for instance, people speak in various degrees of formalities, depending on the people they’re talking to and the setting. While in some Western languages they have gender-based pronouns and honorifics, here in Asia we also have seniority-based pronouns and honorifics. Sometimes, even those titles extend to the profession they hold, especially professions that involve mentorship.
Tricky, eh? Wait until you know it gets even more tricky in Southeast Asia, where societies are more pluralistic than relatively homogeneous East Asia.
I’m an Indonesian who spent most of my life in Jakarta. The city is a salad bowl where you can hear various languages and dialects casually tossed around in informal settings. According to BPS (Statistics Indonesia), 633 ethnic groups were recorded in 2015 in the archipelago. Each ethnic group has their own language and of course, their pronouns and honorific titles.
In Jakarta, we also try to honor people’s ethnicity by calling them by their ethnic, seniority-based pronouns. Bear with me if it’s complicated. I call my Minangkabau neighbors “Uda” and “Uni”, which are general honorifics to address older people in Minangkabau. I call my Javanese neighbors “Bude” and “Pakde”, which Javenese use to address uncles and aunts. I call my Sundanese neighbors “Aa” and “Teteh”, which Sundanese use to address older brothers and sisters.
Alright, so now we have gender-based, seniority-based, and ethnic-based honorifics. All infused in one. Phew.
Wait until you know we also have profession-based honorifics, on top of that.
Like I have explained before, Jakarta is a salad bowl. Due to the rampant development gap, people all over Indonesia come to the capital city to make a living. The high-skilled, technocratic people end up working at skyscrapers, offices, in hospitality industry, or some service industry used by middle-income individuals, and simply being addressed “Bapak” and “Ibu” (Indonesian general Mr. and “Mrs.”, used in formal and informal settings) or “Mas” and “Mbak” (Javanese older brother and sister, respectively). However, some may end up working informal jobs and being addressed by their profession-based honorific that bears certain cultural stereotype.
For example, construction workers are stereotypically Javanese, thus they are addressed as “Pakde”. Gold-sellers and phone and computer sellers are stereotypically Chinese, so they are addressed as “Kokoh” or “Cici” (older man and woman in Indonesian-Chinese, respectively). Others who work in the street, such as street food sellers, are addressed by their food branding. For example, people who work at Minangkabau restaurant are addressed as “Uda” and “Uni”, those who sell coto makassar are addressed as “Daeng”, those who sell bakso malang (one kind of meatballs) are addressed as “Pakde” while those who sell bakso cuangki (another meatballs) and other meals from West Java such as seblak, cilor, cilok, are addressed as “Akang” and “Teteh”.
What about the natives of Jakarta? What’s their honorific? As border lines blur and movement of people increases, it’s hard to decide who’s the native anymore. The normal consensus says that the Betawi ethnic group is the native to Jakarta, and they are addressed as “Abang” and “Mpok” (older brother and older sister) in third person pronouns. It’s so rare to hear people address anyone “Mpok” nowadays, unless when you’re about to buy nasi uduk. But “Abang”? It’s used widely, especially for informal workers such as e-hail drivers, bus and angkot drivers, and meals that don’t belong to any culture, such as bakso, ice cream, es podeng.
Funnily enough, all these intricacies mostly happen in Jakarta. When I go to West Java, people address me as “Teteh”, and people in Yogyakarta call me “Mbak”. As if I am part of them. Looking back at it, I can’t help but wonder. Are we Jakartans using ethnicity-based pronouns to honor and acknowledge different ethnic groups, to make up for our own lack of culture, or simply because of our arrogance; in the process of othering these ethnicities?
