AWOK ORANG PAHANG, WEII?

I consider myself a Johorean. My dad's from Muar and mom's a Batu Pahat (an). I spent my primary years in Johor Bharu but later went all over, as dad got transferred. Settling in Kuantan, Pahang, I have acquired a new native tongue. Mingling with patients and the locals here who speak malay with a strong Pahang dialect, I have picked their words, phrases and twang with ease. I could even speak them better than my husband! I am so comfortable conversing in this lingo that many thought I was a local-bred.

It's not sufficient to just utter the phrases monotonously flat. You've got to voice them out with a special lilt. The more 'kampung' you sound the better it is! For example, "Awok nak ke mana weii?" is asked with the sentence ending in a high note and not without a slight tune to it!.

iKelah's uncle Ayah Teh of Temerloh (who owns 'Gerai Ayah Teh' at the Temerloh R&R, check it out!)) was a Music teacher who took pains in documenting words/ phrases unique to the Pahang dialect. Off and on we hear him rattle off some of these phrases and we get so fascinated hearing them. At times they sounded so foreign to the point of being funny that we laughed our heads off. When iKelah lost his balance and slid down the slippery banks of Sg Rimau into the water, recently, Boogey described the incident by borrowing Ayah Teh's word 'tercelabak', meaning to slip and fall with great force. Ayah Teh had once described an incident where an army helicopter crashed into the waters of Sg Pahang, "...helikopter tu mepeh-mepeh ke bawah, langsung terus tercelabak ke dalam sungai.." (translated as: the helicopter spiraled down and crashed into the muddy waters ) . I hope Boogey, Panglima, Kenakelayan and ikelah can fill me in for more of Ayah Teh's collection of old Pahang words. Below is a glossary of some.

Another of Boogey's brush with queer Pahang words which he never tires in relating to us would be the 'kelompin' or 'jabe' incident. Once, my FIL, asked Boogey to fetch a 'jabe' from the store-room (my FIL keeps all odds and ends overhere and you can be sure almost 100% that everything that you needed for the house-hold is stored neatly here!). Now being a very young naive lad back then, he wasn't too sure what 'jabe' was. So he stared hard at every item on the shelves and used his intuition to find an object that 'looked', 'sounded', 'smelled' like a 'jabe'. Heheh. You see, FIL, was a very firm father who detest lameness, thus asking him back what 'jabe ' was, was an impossible feat . So he stood there, looking earnestly, tension building as FIL was kept waiting. " Jabe pon awok tak kenal? Ish! Hok macam kelompin tu!" Now, who would ever think that these two words share the same meaning?

Now, when I see my aged patients, I've got to accomodate a number of things. Firstly, I've to switch into the local dialect. Secondly, as most of them are hard in hearing, I've got to shout out my queries to them. "MAKCIK! KE SUNGAI, MOLEK? SUNGAI BESOR? SUNGAI KECIK?" Now, you might be thinking that I'm talking some gibberish here, but that is how the old people here address the issue pertaining to the excretion of our bodily waste-products. Perhaps, the old kampung folks are used to using the river as toilets, thus the terms sungai besor or kecik; however sungai besor does not indicate the size of the river but the size of the excreta, rather! That's why some of ikelah's aunties here do not favor the river fish like Paten and Baung, which are synonymous to Pahang rivers especially in Temerloh. Their vivid thoughts of the Patens gobbling up the floating products of 'sungai besor' must be a real great turn-off for them! 'Sungai besor' or not, do you know that the Paten of Sg Pahang can grow to up 5-6 kilos in size and can catch a whooping price of 80-90 RM per kilo?


I have long left the soils of Johor and wonder if I can speak the way Johoreans speak with ease, again. If my memory serves me right, the Johoreans love to end their sentences with the jargon 'ek'. " Apa nama awak, ek?" " Awak nak ikut jugak ek?" And there are several unique words which I believe belong to Johoreans like for instance 'gerobok' which we love to shorten to 'gobok' which means cupboard. That word is terribly foreign overhere in Pahang that I have long lost its usage as 'almari' came to replace it. Thus each time I'm back amongst my parents and siblings, these words will sound alien when they utter them to me. Another weird Johor word would be 'belengging' which carries a meaning more applicable to men rather than women. You see, when one chose to 'belengging' it would mean that the person is in a state of partial nakedness i.e. exposing his upper body, above the navel (never below, mind you!) . Thus in the Malay culture, it's only acceptable for men to adopt this sort of dressing, never the women!

Even amongst the Pahangites, the dialect changes according to geographical differences. Apparently, iKelah says (kalau dia bohong, kawe pon bohong la yek!) that certain words evolve as you go down the river! (yes, the river, again!) . For instance, the word kawe meaning I, is used at the upper end of the river. As you go down towards the river-mouth, the same word has shortened into 'koi' (not to be mistaken as ikan koi, though!). Why? Don't ask me. Perhaps the people down the river became more sophisticated and found that shortened words made business transactions faster? I really don't know, :)

So each time I'm being asked this,"Awok orang Pahang weii?" My standard answer would be this, "Tidak! Kawe orang Johor. Kawe kawen orang Pahang. Terpkasa jadi orang Pahang ler" As the good old malay saying goes: "Masuk kandang kambing mengembek, masuk kandang lembu menguak" or its English equivalent: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".


Glossary
kelompin- cheap bags, plastic or paper
cebek- to carry around things by the hand
jabe- can be used interchangebly with kelumpin
kelebek- to scrutinise with the hands? hehe (in my field of work, I do this a lot!)
condeh-to place something precariously at the edge of something
cempong-a beloved, so Bea is Pycno's cempong, so to speak
pentelun- must be copied from pantaloon, I guess
pedo'oh- to bluff
gamok-nya- maybe
ralik- absorbed in an action
komeng-?
benok- heart
bok- short form of bawak
okoit-?
gohek- cycle
menggelebeh- excess fat hang-outs
kanchuit- underwear
beser- to urinate all over
kohot- fatigue
kerabat- to climb (Panglima likes using this. I assume it's a Pahang slang too? Correct me )
semejid- Pekan's people way of saying Masjid
ke darat- away from the river (again, see how they relate their life to the river?)
wokme- awak semua= you all
deme- ditto
kome- I, we
kawan- I
kawe- I
koi- I
rodong- friends, pals. So you readers are my Blog Rodongs!