Author Archives: Sam Hassell

Folk Speech- Indonesia

“Kenyang Bali atau kenyang Jawa”

Bali full or Java full?

In the above piece of Indonesian folk speech, according to the informant, the phrase “Bali full” connotes sexual satisfaction while “Java full” connotes that “your stomach is full” or your appetite is satisfied. The item was learned from friends, around 14 or 15 years of age. This folk speech is used to “tease people” when they say that they are full, almost always in the context of just having eaten a meal. The informant likes this folk speech because it  is funny and “perfectly describes the different lifestyles of the different parts of Indonesia”: Java is mainly Muslim and a sexually restrictive environment, but has good food, while Bali is mainly Hindu, liberal about sexuality (the informant noted that “kama,” or sexual pleasure, is one of the three goals of Hindu life), and doesn’t have very good food.

I agree with the informant that this piece of folk speech is an interesting way of asking a question in a humorous way. Particularly for inhabitants of Bali such as the informant, it may also constitute a way of expressing and reinforcing one’s own identity, which in one respect (less sexual restriction) one might be proud of and in the other (bad food) not so much. The item also seems to represent a sort of blason populaire since its meaning and significance rely upon the stereotypes of two specific islands in Indonesia which are considered (at least according to this piece of folk speech and the informant) to be diametrically opposed with respect to the quality of food and sexual behavior, or norms. This latter respect in which they differ is, moreover, correlated by the informant with the religious identities of those islands—Bali being predominantly Hindu and Java predominantly Muslim—which she seemed to view as strongly predictive of the general sentiment of each island concerning sexual behavior. This small piece of folklore thus remarks on three significant aspects of the culture of these two Indonesian islands, and perhaps more generally on Indonesian culture as a whole.

Meta-folklore/Folk Etymology/Folk Speech- Thailand

?????

“Here”

“Fuck”

The informant states that the above Thai curse word is also the name of an animal—“a lizard that looks like a baby crocodile” (the animal is called a “water monitor” in English). Thai people claim the reason why the curse word and the name of the animal are the same is because “in the past a lot of farmers raised chickens, and this animal would come out of the canal and eat the chickens, and it was believed that if you saw this animal that it was bad luck.”  The informant learned this item from friends at school when he was around 12 years old. He states that he would tell the story only to his friends, and not to anybody older than he. He believes that the story is correct and that “this is the reason why the word is used.”

The story that the informant tells of why the Thai equivalent of our curse word “fuck” is also the name of a certain reptile found in Thailand is an instance of meta-folklore with a sort of very brief legend being used to explain the etymology (thus, folk etymology as well) of this piece of Thai folk speech. It seems quite possible that if the story in any way represents the actual cause of the conflation of the two meanings of the word, then the English translation as “fuck” might not encompass all the same possible connotations. Instead the Thai “here,” would seem to express, or in some way relate to, a cause of misfortune (since it refers to a creature who, according to the story, represented bad luck, particularly in that he would eat the farmers’ chickens) whereas the English “fuck” would not, instead being mostly used as a form of (vulgar) reaction to an disagreeable circumstance.

Folk Belief/Myth/Ritual/Folk Religion- Thailand

In Thailand, people believe that solar eclipses are caused by the Hindu god Rahu putting the son in his mouth. And this causes bad luck to everyone. Then, in order to get out of this bad luck, you have to pray to him and give him eight, black things, because eight represents his number in Indian astrology, and these things have to be black because his skin is black and because of the darkness/blackness caused by him swallowing the sun. These eight black things are:

  1. Black chicken
  2. Black liquor
  3. Black coffee
  4. Black jelly
  5. Black sticky rice
  6. Black beans
  7. Black dessert (specific Thai dessert like a black custard)
  8. Black egg

You go outside of your house and put all eight of these things on a table and burn incense and then pray to Rahu. This makes him take bad luck away from you and even give you good luck.

The informant states that he learned this item from his mother, around 13 or 14 years of age, at home, most likely because he had heard about it and sought more information from his mother. He wouldn’t tell anyone about this item unless they asked him about it first; rather, he claims he “would only talk about it if there was an actual solar eclipse” in which case he might tell friends, his brother, his cousins, or anyone “close enough” to him. To the informant, the item doesn’t “make sense,” and he asks: “Why if god created everything does he need anything from you?” According to the informant, the ritual was “just created by people to make themselves feel happy or safe from the bad luck.”

The above piece of Thai folklore is a good example of a “conversion” superstition or folk belief, whereby some highly specific and perhaps ritualized action or set of actions is taken in order to ward-off bad luck. In this case, the actions are gathering eight specific items together, all of a black color, placing them on a table outside of one’s house, burning incense, and praying to the god Rahu, all in that order. The conversion superstition here does not, therefore, merely involve an action which stands on its own—for instance, knocking on wood or throwing salt over one’s shoulder—but it bears a significant relation to another being, the Hindu god Rahu, whose swallowing of the sun was the source of bad luck. In this sense, it is also a form of supplication or a religious act done for the sake of a god. As the informant notes, however, most people who adhere to this folk belief in Thailand are in fact not Hindu, but rather Buddhist, and thus the practice clearly falls outside of what is considered necessary to be a good Buddhist, constituting a form of folk religion. The informant even states that the belief contradicts the core of Buddhist belief since “Buddha teaches that you should rely on yourself not on the god.”

Finally, the item is also interesting in that it exemplifies the myth-ritualist perspective which holds that a ritual is intimately connected to, and perhaps even the performance of, a myth itself. Failure to perform the sacred rite correctly can have dire consequences which, for Thai people holding the above folk belief, would be the persistence of bad luck caused by the eclipse. Unlike most myths, however, which are stories transpiring outside the boundaries of profane space and time, occurring instead in a sort of sacred plane, the narrative of the Hindu god Rahu swallowing the sun and causing a solar eclipse must in fact take place in the here and now since we know that solar eclipses do in fact occur in this world. The explanatory power, or literal truth, of the myth seems nevertheless to have been abandoned by the Thai people with the offering of modern-day scientific explanations for why solar eclipses occur, according to the informant. The ritual performance—the “conversion” superstition—seems therefore to be substantially more important than the myth to which it is tied. The main concern for those who adhere to this belief, then, is the visiting of bad luck upon them, and how they are able to combat this through the ritual.

Joke- Australia

“What do you call an abo (i.e. aboriginal) with head lice?” Answer: A lamington

According to the informant, the above joke is part of a large class of jokes called “abo jokes” which makes fun of aboriginals and are prevalent in Australia. This specific “abo joke” was acquired by the informant from a friend in high school. The informant stated that she would “probably never use” this specific joke, perhaps only telling it to a “little kid because they laugh at everything.” Failing to think of another abo joke, the informant told the one above, which she considers “not very funny” and “not a good abo joke.”

Part of the distinctiveness of this joke, I think, lies in the probability that it will not be easily understood by people unfamiliar with Australian culture. First, one must have some knowledge of what an Australian aboriginal is, and that “abo” is slang for such an individual. Some context for the rather antagonistic relationship between Australians and the aboriginals also might be useful for understanding why the Australians like to tell these jokes so much (as conveyed above, the informant seemed quite distraught over and displeased with her poor abo joke), though Americans might intuitively grasp the nature of this relationship by thinking about the history of their own country—like Australia, also colonized by the British—with Native Americans. And while I myself had a pretty good grasp of this form of joke, having previously studied and lived in Australia last Spring, I still had not a clue what a “lamington” was, which according to the informant, is a distinctively Australian dessert. Indeed, some imaging of the appearance of this dessert seems clearly necessary for understanding the joke, though one might still find it “not funny” and unrepresentative of the class of abo jokes as a whole as the informant believes.

Folk Game/Prank (Australia)- “Ghosting”

The goal of “ghosting,” according to the informant, is to follow a person walking on the street for as long as possible without them noticing. “Someone will be walking on the street and someone else will go behind the person and follow them step-by-step.” You can ghost by yourself, take turns with other people, or follow two or more different people at the same time with another friend or friends, and you can mount somebody on your shoulders while you ghost. However it is done, “ghosting” is “about getting into someone’s personal space without them realizing.”

The informant stated that she first learned this folk game/prank from an Australian TV show about two years ago when she was 18 and has known friends who play it. The game is always played outside on the streets, most likely “when you are bored.” “Ghosting,” according to the informant, “is pretty fun but stupid.”

Though the informant stressed “ghosting” as a game instead of a prank, stating that “Australians are pretty cool about it” if they find-out that somebody is ghosting them, I believe that this game can be understood as a prank as well for several reasons. First, the game has a definite group of insiders, or those who are doing the ghosting, as well as a definite group of outsiders—those who are being ghosted, or followed closely while walking. Moreover, the group of insiders, or the participants in the game, are clearly “in the know,” while those who are being followed, the outsiders, are unaware that anything unusual is taking place, and this gap of knowledge is only overcome when a transition into awareness of the game occurs as they find out they are being followed. Finally, it also seems that ghosting might serve as a form, albeit a very mild one, of initiation whereby certain members of the group are selected or perhaps “dared” to engage in the prank or game; in this respect, there could even be “insiders” and “outsiders” within this group itself determined by who has had the courage to participate in the game and possibly incur the wrath of some random pedestrian who they are ghosting if the latter should find out what the ghoster is doing.