Chapter 15 Speech levels
References to speech levels in Madurese occur sporadically in previous chap-
ters, most prominently in the discussion of pronouns in Chapters 3 and 7. As
shown there, in addition to the paradigm of ‘common’ pronouns, there are addi-
tional first and second person forms. The paradigms of first and second person
pronouns are given in (1).
(1) 1st and 2nd person pronominal forms
kasar/ tengnga'an alos
mapas
1 st person sengko' bula kaula
engko' gula (ba)dan kaula
aba' dalem
apdina
apdi dalem
bal-gebbal dalem
2 nd person ba'na dika sampeyan
ba'eng panjennengngan
ba'en padana
kake sampeyan dalem
sedha ajunan dalem
ajunan sampeyan
ajunan panjennengngan
There are three divisions of personal pronouns: kasar ‘rough’, tengnga'an ‘mid-
dle’, and alos ‘refined’. Kasar is also referred to as mapas by the Madurese, and
sometimes ngoko, a term borrowed from Javanese. The pronouns used in any
particular interaction are to be selected in accord with the respective social sta-
tus of the interlocutors. There are multiple kasar/mapas pronouns for 2nd person.
These represent dialectal differences. The considerable list of alos forms
represents increasing respect toward the addressee; the last few being used only
when speaking with the nobility, kings and God. The Madurese people often
refer to the three vocabularies as enja' iya, enggi enten, and enggi bunten,
which, as shown in (2) below, are the words for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ for each level.^1
(^1) Although within the 1973 spelling system the words for 'yes' in both tengnga'an and
alos are spelled enggi, they are pronounced differently, [ki] in tengnga'an and