LANGUAGE

When two strange Balinese meet, as for instance on the road. they call each other as djero, a safe, polite way of addressing someone whose title is unknown. Since there are no outward signs of caste, the appropriate titles cannot be used and all the words for " you " (tjai, nyai, nani) are extremely familiar and derogatory. Strangers talk in the middle language, a compromise between the daily speech and the polite tongue.

Should, however, one be of low caste and the other a nobleman, it would be wrong for them to continue talking in this manner, and one of the two, probably the high-caste man, will ask the other: " Antuh ]ingge? Where is your place (caste) ? " which is answered by the other man's stating his caste. Then the usual system is adopted; the low man speaks the high tongue and the aristocrat answers in the common language.

When I started to study Balinese I found it disturbing to hear the people around the house talking in the daily language and then suddenly shifting to high to address Gusti, our landlordprince, who answered them in the common language. The high and low tongues are not two dialects or even variations of the same languages, but two distinct, unrelated languages with separate roots, different words, and extremely dissimilar character. It was always incongruous to hear an educated nobleman talking the harsh, guttural low tongue, while an ordinary peasant had to address him in the refined high Balinese.

The low language is the everyday tongue spoken by equals at home, at work, and at the market. It is undoubtedly the native language of the island and belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian dialects, the aboriginal languages of the archipelago. The high language is similar to Javanese and is of Sanskrit-Javanese origin. It is flowery, and rich in shades of meaning; I have been told that to speak it well, one should know about ten different words to express the same idea.

Few Balinese can speak the high language well, and the ordinary peasant generally ignores it, except perhaps for standard expression to address a superior. The peasant learned to listen only when he became a vassal of the Hindu-Javanese feudal lords, who had to learn the language of the island, but they demanded to be addressed in their own, high tongue by the unworthy natives. The natural politeness of the Balinese perhaps gave birth to the middle language, used when in doubt of a man's caste.