The Identical Minangkabau English

[Alec Sutaryo]

He appeared in my Facebook's wall with elegant and contended look just
few months ago. But long before, he ever visited me and I was unable
to be a good host since many guests came to my workshop. I was affraid
he felt neglected then. His show-up however delights my sense of
friendship since we grew in the same area, the West Coast of Sumatra,
despite my feeling guilty on what had happened.

In where we are from, beach boys like us are identical with bad
behavior and juvenile. And Zamrud, his name, seemed to avoid any
conversation that touches such the background. I said to Zamrotta
(that's how I sometimes call him), "Do not ever underestimate beach
boys. They used to be the seafarers who opened great civilization from
Tamil, Egypt, Mediterrania, England even to Eastern Europe, not to
mention southeastern Asian archipelago and the Pacific.

Dispersing to all over the world has been a deeply rooted tradition, a
scared call from matrilineal culture of Minangkabau for young people
to leave their homeland clearly stated by ancient wisewords such as
"Marantau bujang dahulu, di rumah paguno balun" or "Boy, you shall
embark since you are not yet beneficial at home."

This is one of the reasons why Minangkabauans remain advanced in their
homeland with garment technology like wooden waving machine.
Minangkabauans are mostly colorful outfitted that you hardly find in
other places of the archipelago simply because in West Sumatra the
machine, called Tanun Songket, is only operated by woman. Since
youngmen did not bring with them any garment technology, most places
where they settled and multiplied outside of West Sumatra were merely
bare and least dressed-up.

And why should they flee their homes? I assume Minangkabauans have
their Semitic root (direct descendants of Sem, a son of Noah). Sem has
only two brothers, Ham and Japhet. As the sons got married having
children and grandsons, God commanded Noah to send them away so they
can multiply on Earth. Matriarchy I believe is a natural output of
sending sons away from home. Women who remain in the homeland become
the only gender to prevail their heritage.

Zamrud and I however were supposed to find our way to the shore and
initiate a long journey across ocean finding new places to multiply.
Today we call our selves, Anak Pasia or the (Sand) Beach Boys. But in
ancient times in Egypt, Pharaoh's Queen Hapshetshut described
ancestral boys like us as the travellers from Pewnet (from pantai or
beach), a divine land where bred trained baboons for harvesting ripe
coconuts and from where her ancestors came from.

In my previous work "Minangkabau Hebrew Identical Words" I
intentionally did not mention Hebrew word 'panta' (means all or
entirely) in the dictionary for I am explaining now another
application of the word for 'ocean.' Thus, words such as pewnet,
pantai, panta, punt or Phonecians are presumably associated with the
Semitic Minangkabauan seafarers who sailed all over the world mixing
up with descendants of Ham and Japhet wherever they met them and
produced new breed like all-ancient Persians, Chinese, Caucasians,
native Americans, Jews, Arabs, and so on.

The last time we met at my place, Zamrud protested that making up a
correlation between the West Sumatrans with eastern Europeans is an
exaggerate. And I said, "I would not argue with a beach boy like you,
so let's make Google as the judge." As he agreed, I told him to type
water in Albanian translation and it came up with 'pambuluara.' He was
surprised as I believe many Mingkabauans, Malaysians and Indonesians
would be.

If you are an English speaking person, perhaps I should explain that
you must find the Albanian pambuluara is much identical with
'pambuluah' in Minangkabau or 'pembuluh' in Bahasa Indonesia
describing a function of hollow tube bamboo (buluh, buluah, balohong)
for watering, with prefix 'pa' as a common Phoenician characteristic
for nouns.

At this level, building up a connectivity between Minangkabau and
English language are not anymore a very difficult task, one of the
reasons why I make this dictionary to support the previous identical
Minangkabau - Hebrew workpiece. But, I will not make this introduction
any longer since there will never be enough space and time to explain
the whole chains of the stories, as Subuh call is heard from nearby
masjid and I have to end to this point and ready for my prayer.
Hopefully and eventually this dictionary becomes useful for everyone.

Depok 6 May 2011
on behalf of love, peace & brotherhood

Ali Cestar
The Garin of Surau
http://www.surau.net/english/introduction.php