Hantu (Singapore)

 

The word “hantu” strikes fear into the hearts of most S.E.Asian children in my childhood days.  

    It means “ghost / spirit” in Malay / Indonesian.  There were lots of hantu films in my younger days, which we children couldn’t watch without at least one adult present for us to clutch.

    Adults, especially male ones for some reason, loved to scare us with hantu stories at night — no point telling them in the glare of daylight, not effective enough, not so much fun.

    The big house where I grew up had a red skin banana tree (not common) at the bottom of the back garden.  The loo was also at that end of the house.  

    One night, the womenfolk (two aunts, three older sisters, two maids) sat in the covered patio after dinner, and one of them started to say that hantu-hantu* reside in these red skin banana trees.  

    A bit later, I had to go to the loo.  I dug my sister out of bed and made her go with me, insisting that she stand outside by the door AND keep on talking loudly so that I could hear she was there.

(Singapore, 1960s)

* In Malay / Indonesian, one just doubles up a noun to make it plural, e.g., kawan / friend is kawan-kawan in the plural.

Spoonerism: kepala and kelapa (Singapore)

Non-native speakers, and students, of Malay and/or Indonesian often get kepala (head) mixed up with kelapa (coconut).

We had an elderly kebun (Malay for gardener) whom we kept on more to help him earn some money than anything.  Any windfalls from our two coconut trees would be given to him, for his wife to make a curry with, which would always be received with great joy.

One morning, as he came to work, my uncle said excitedly to him, “Kebun, kebun, malam tadi kepala jatuh!  [Gardener, gardener, last night head fell!]”  The poor man went quite ashen.

In April, my siblings and I took our 85-year-old mother out for a meal, and her Indonesian maid was invited along (we always tried to, and still do, include our maids in these outings, as they generally can’t afford to on their own).  The dessert was some yam mash with what was billed as coconut cream, but the white liquid didn’t quite taste of coconut milk.  My sister said to the maid, “Tidak ada kepala [not have head].”  (She meant to say, “Tidak ada kelapa [not have coconut].”)  The maid nearly choked on her dessert.