Bila dan Mengapa 'You' Menjadi 'Kita': Satu Analisis Perbandingan Inggeris-Melayu.

The use of pronouns differs across languages. The most striking difference between English and Malay lies in the second-person pronoun. There are several options in Malay for the translation of the English second-person pronoun which refers exclusively to the addressee, i.e. 'definite you'. The selection of the appropriate option is dependent mainly on socio-cultural factors. There is also another type of you which refers to people in general and not to the second person in particular, known as 'indefinite you'. Two main English-Malay dictionaries provide contradicting Malay equivalents for indefinite you. A review of the literature failed to yeild any studies or academic discussions on the equivalent of indefinite you and its suitable translation in Malay. Adopting the parallel text analysis method, this paper investigates how the Malay language, as used by Malay society, encodes the functions fulfilled by indefinite you. The findings show that the functions fulfilled by indefinite you in general are not encoded in Malay using any of its second-person pronoun variants such as anda, engkau, awak and kamu. Instead, there are two other methods: (a) the use of words denoting people in general such as orang (people), seseorang (one), siapa-siapa (anyone) and sesiapa (anyone); and (b) the use of the inclusive first-person plural kita. The study discusses the reasons behind the Malay choice of kita as an indefinite personal pronoun from both the linguistic and cultural prespectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]