Posts

Showing posts from March, 2023

The old Javanese word for gambling

Image
Concerning Javanese dots The business of assigning meaning to words is a very dynamic one, and only those who are in the dictionary business can readily appreciate the spacetime variability of words. Stuart Robson, Singgih Wibisono (2002) Javanese English Dictionary (with the assistance of Yacinta Kurniasih), Periplus, Hong Kong. Robson and Wibisono (2002) wrote, for instance: Experience has shown that defining the meanings of Javanese words is like aiming at a moving target . A comparison of definitions from two existing dictionaries, say Pigeaud and Jansz, seems to highlight this problem, because often the meanings given apparently differ, either in emphasis or totally, or the word is missing in one but present in the other. What is going on here? Is this the same language? Was one lexicographer right and the other wrong? In old Javanese, twah and toh can be used interchangebly to refer to birthmarks or black spots found on human bodies,