Where are the Camels?

This is a true story. I lived in Solo, an old royal kingdom town in Central Java, from 1980 to 1985. When I arrived I brought along a personal computer, one of the first ones in town. By the time I left they were everywhere and several computer shops had sprung up. Progress was inevitable. But this is not about computers. It is about language learning and how the author of a simple introductory book on Indonesian language affected the pre-conceived notions of a student through careless choice of materials.

It was around July 1983. An American friend of mine was halfway into a two-year research project on traditional shadow-play stories (wayang kulit). She had an old college friend from the USA who had moved to Norway in the 1970's, and through marriage to a Norwegian, had managed to settle there. But her friend wanted to come to visit during that summer, and to make the most of her planned two-month vacation, decided to learn some Bahasa Indonesia well before the trip.

It seems that locating any book on Indonesian language in Norway in the early 1980's was a considerable challenge. She went to Oslo and visited all of the book shops. Finally, after a considerable effort, she located an introductory book on Bahasa Indonesia, and set upon the task of learning basics--without a teacher.

Several months later, after having studied the basics, she made the long-trip and had arrived in Solo. She had been there for a week or two and was getting adjusted to a summertime climate with 12 hours of sunlight (a contradiction in Norway, of course). One day it happened that I was going somewhere at the same time as she, and I gave her a lift on my Yamaha motorcycle. As we drove about the city, navigating around three-wheel pedicabs (becak), bicycle traffic and the odd ox-drawn cart, she asked me a curious question.

"Where are all of the camels?"

"Camels?" I responded, thinking it quite a strange question indeed.

"Yes, camels--I had the impression that there would be lots of camels in Indonesia."

Well, loose chickens, goats, cats with haphazard tails, becak-s, goats in becak-s, beggars, and children, lots of children -- yes these for sure were to be seen -- but, but... camels?

I explained that I had not once seen a camel in my three years in Java, and admitted that I had only recently learned the word for camel myself, rather by means of a lucky coincidence, since there was a small shop not far from where I lived that was called Toko Unta (Camel Store), and one of my methods for expanding my vocabulary was to learn the meaning of words I often saw on shops. When you see a foreign word often enough it ceases to be foreign in a sense, but without a meaning attached still is not a friend that you can mention to other people.

"What gave you the idea that there would be lots of camels?" I asked.

"Well in the book I bought in Oslo, on learning Bahasa Indonesia, the first chapter introduces the word 'unta', and I thought that if it was in the first chapter then 'unta' must be a VERY important word in Bahasa Indonesia, and obviously and important means of transportation."

What a book. It taught language but mis-taught the important aspect of the enveloping culture.

Later, when I had an opportunity, I looked at this strange book. Indeed, there it was, 'unta', in Chapter One. It also had other misleading words in the first several chapters, such as rabid dogs and petty thiefs. Not the best teacher of reality, in my opinion.

So if you ever want to learn Indonesian, beware of words like this. You might find "sombrero" in the Indonesian dictionary, but, despite the hot sun and tendency midday naps, you will not find a sombrero on or off of a head anywhere in Indonesia.