Reduplication is the name linguists give to the doubling up of words. It doesn’t happen all that much in English, aside from making adjectives more intense, as in Star Wars (“Long long ago in a galaxy far far away”), or baby talk (dumdum, poopoo), or when apologizing to Miss Jackson (for ever-ever?). Bahasa Malaysia, on […]
Tag Archives: Language
Brotherly Love
Two of my three amazing and talented sisters visited me a few months back. To get here they had to layover in Jeddah for 8 hours. I was worried sick they'd get harrassed by the Mutaween or just have an icky time in general and was working on my "we think they're crazy too" speech. […]
Granfalloons
Granfalloon (n) : “A proud and meaningless association of human beings.” A word coined by Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) in his book Cat’s Cradle. I was recalling the concept recently for some reason but couldn’t bring the term to mind. There it is: A granfalloon. The idea is illustrated in the book by a woman from […]
Perjalanan (The Journey)
Duet with M. Nasir & Al-Jawaher (1982) M. Nasir: My affairs are not yet settled Till I have found His Light All I desire on this journey Is that you send along the Fatihah for me