Ass?
Assalamu’alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakaatuh is a common word in my life, and in writing people usually write it as “Ass. Wr. Wb.” or “Ass.” for brevity. The “Ass.” form is especially popular for use on SMS.
I once read someone’s post on a mailing list advocating the abolition of the abbreviated form. His argument is that “ass” means something completely different in English.
Well, I also had thought about it long before reading his post, and my stand is that such change is unnecesarry. Here’s my thinking…
In a world of many languages, it is expected that some neutral words in a language may be a curse or dirty word in another language. Some examples:
“yet” is a neutral word in English but it means “f*ck” in Thai
“asu” means tomorrow in Japanese but is “dog” in Javanese (a curse word)
“ma” means mother in many cultures but - if spoken with the correct intonation - means “dog” in Thai (a curse word)
“sat” means depleted in Javanese (example: “banyune wis sat”) but is a curse word in Thai (I forget the meaning)
“cincin” means ring in Indonesian but means “male reproductive organ” in Japanese (chinchin)
“marah” means angry in Indonesian but sounds like the Japanese “mara” (male reproductive organ) (am I stretching things a bit?)
“tai” means sh*t in Indonesian but appears a lot in Japanese (taihen, taisetsu, shitai). “-keteku” (in Indonesia it sounds like “ketekku” meaning “my armpit”) also appears a lot in Japanese. (ok perhaps I’m really stretching things a bit)
And those are just some examples I can think of in English, Indonesian, Thai, and Japanese. If we include all human languages, I bet the list will grow significantly.
Since all of those are just coincidences, I don’t think there is no need to object the heavily-abbreviated “ass” form. The context is usually clear enough anyway…
