From tempeh to satay, why do English speakers keep changing Asian words?
Indonesia exports many things. Coffee. Spices. Palm Oil. Apparently, we also export words. The peculiar thing is that some of them return with a few unexpected adjustments. Tempe becomes tempeh. Sate becomes satay. Sarung becomes sarong. Rotan becomes rattan. Somewhere between leaving Asia and arriving on an English menu, our words are expected to adapt.
The explanation is always delivered with the best intentions. It’s easier for English speakers. Easier to pronounce. Easier to remember. How considerate. It takes a remarkable kind of confidence to discover somebody else’s language and assume it’s waiting for your revisions. Europeans crossed oceans looking for spices, found the spices, traded the spices, built fortunes from the spices, but somewhere along the journey, learning what the words were actually called became the difficult part.
Curiously, this generosity rarely travels in the opposite direction. Nobody has suggested the French rename croissant because tourists struggle with it. Nobody has proposed shortening Worcestershire out of compassion for the rest of us. If the word belongs to Europe, the expectation is that everyone else will learn it. If the word belongs somewhere else, the word itself is expected to be more cooperative.
I’ve often wondered when exactly this arrangement was agreed upon. Was there a meeting? Minutes? A committee? Because nobody invited the Indonesians. We could have mentioned that tempe was already settled.
Curiously, this generosity rarely travels in the opposite direction. Nobody has suggested the French rename croissant because tourists struggle with it. Nobody has proposed shortening Worcestershire out of compassion for the rest of us. If the word belongs to Europe, the expectation is that everyone else will learn it. If the word belongs somewhere else, the word itself is expected to be more cooperative.
I’ve often wondered when exactly this arrangement was agreed upon. Was there a meeting? Minutes? A committee? Because nobody invited the Indonesians. We could have mentioned that tempe was already settled.
The strange thing is that this isn’t really about food. Food just happens to be where the evidence is easiest to find. A friend of mine quit her job because she was the only Indonesian working with a team of French colleagues in Indonesia. Every meeting was conducted entirely in French. Not English. Certainly not Bahasa Indonesia. Nobody paused to ask whether perhaps English might help the one person who wasn’t French. Meanwhile, invite one English speaker to lunch with a group of Indonesians and the entire table will switch to English before the iced tea arrives. Nobody asks us to. We simply do it because that’s what polite people would do; that’s what we think good manners look like.
Maybe that’s why the little H has always fascinated me. Not because anyone will lose sleep over a single letter, but because of the assumption hiding behind it. Nobody asked whether tempe needed an H. Nobody asked whether sate wanted a Y. Someone simply decided they would be easier that way, and the rest of the world politely agreed.
The remarkable part was never the extra letter.
It was believing you had the authority to add it.
Maybe that’s why the little H has always fascinated me. Not because anyone will lose sleep over a single letter, but because of the assumption hiding behind it. Nobody asked whether tempe needed an H. Nobody asked whether sate wanted a Y. Someone simply decided they would be easier that way, and the rest of the world politely agreed.
The remarkable part was never the extra letter.
It was believing you had the authority to add it.
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