[A. G. Maisey]

Kai has illuminated one of the problems with keris, and indeed with the attempted study of any single aspect of a culture, or society, in the absence of a comprehensive study of the entire culture and society.

The glossary I have pointed Eric towards is indeed select. Intentionally so.

It is very much focused on the terminology applicable to Javanese keris, and even in respect of Javanese keris, the references given are restricted.

It could well be asked why I chose to provide a very restricted list of words, and words that are applicable to only one of the places where keris are found. This decision was not a particularly difficult one to make, as the primary purpose of the glossary I have provided is to provide a foundation for somebody beginning the study of the keris.

For the last 800 years at least, the dominant culture in Maritime South East Asia has been the Javanese culture, so much so that other cultures in the region have actively fought against this cultural domination. Couple this with the fact that the keris originated in Jawa, and then feed in the extensive lexicon of Javanese words that apply to the keris, and keris related matters, and it is not at all difficult to understand that the foundation stone of any serious study of the keris must begin with an understanding of the keris in Jawa, both pre-Islamic, and post-Islamic. The lexicon available to us in languages other than Javanese is simply too sparse to provide any reasonably comprehensive coverage of keris related terminology.

The alternate names for keris related matters is a separate question, and it can be a very confusing thing to deal with for almost everybody. We need to be aware that South East Asian languages were not originally written in roman script, thus when we transliterate into roman script from original scripts used in the indigenous societies, we almost invariably have a choice of letters that can be used, so a straight translation from, say, Kawi to even Bahasa Indonesia, or Modern Javanese can result in variations in spelling. If we attempt to translate from the original Kawi into a European language the spellings can again differ.

This is made even more complicated by the fact that in 1972 Indonesia decided that to enter the modern world, they needed to replace Dutch based spellings with English based spellings, so Bahasa Indonesia which had previously used a Dutch methodology to render the sounds of words correctly, changed to an English methodology to render the same sounds correctly. This resulted in a number of spelling changes, for example, TJ in a Dutch spelling became C in an English spelling --- but it is pronounced as "CH". DJ in a Dutch spelling became J in an English spelling. One particular area of confusion was the dotted A, which became an undotted A and which in Javanese is pronounced as O. Say “GANJA” in Central Jawa an you’re likely to have the police breathing down your neck. One needs to learn to pronounce that A in GANJA as an O, resulting in GONJO as closer to the correct Javanese pronunciation.

These 1972 spelling changes had been preceded by a change in 1947 when the old spelling of "OE" was changed to "U".

When the spellings in Bahasa Indonesia changed, the Javanese language followed suit.

However, try as they might, all these transliterations into roman script failed to render many spellings well enough to give a true pronunciation of the original words. For instance what English speaker could ever guess that “K” is often rendered as a glottal stop, rather than in any way known in English pronunciations. For example, the word “NUSUKAN” is pronounced very closely to “NUSU’AN”.

So, yes, Kai is 100% correct:- the glossary I have referred Eric to is limited, restricted, and Jawa-centic.

I personally feel that to present all the complexities of South East Asian languages, and the further complexities of European attempts to render the indigenous languages of S.E.Asia into roman script and the available sounds for European languages is simply too much to hit a beginner with. However, anybody who can learn the words presented in the glossary that I have linked to, and take note of the sketch of a keris shown in the information pages of that site, will have a flying start in understanding the most frequently used words in keris discussion.

But then, as David has pointed out, English is more than adequate to use with people from outside the indigenous cultures of S.E. Asia when in general discussion concerning the keris. As a general rule, I try to use English when in discussion with people from European based cultures, and when in Jawa, I use Javanese terminology.

The whole purpose of words is to move an idea from one person to another person. It doesn’t really matter what words are used, as long as we can move the idea.