berketerampilan

I have previously discussed the problems in finding words in a Malay dictionary (eg here). The difficulty is caused by words being shown under their root, and it is not always straightforward to identify the root. In English, there is no such problem, as words like befriend and entrust are listed under 'b' and 'e' respectively. But in Malay, you would first have to work out what the root is, so you would need to look under 'f' and 't' respectively, as the words would be listed under friend and trust.

I still sometimes get caught out. Yesterday, I saw the word berketerampilan in the newspaper, and not knowing what it meant, I tried to look it up. Now, looking under 'b' is not going to work, as clearly there is a 'ber' prefix; and 'k' won't work either, as there is a 'ke' + 'an' circumfix. Then there also seems to be a 'ter' prefix, so I started looking under 'ampil' and then under 'rampil'. In fact, the root is terampil ('skilled'), and the word means 'skillful' — in fact there is no 'ter' prefix in there.

One thing that contributed to the difficulty in this instance is that the vast majority of Malay roots are bisyllabic, which is why I first guessed that 'ampil' might be the root. In fact, in this case the actual root terampil is trisyllabic.

But maybe I shouldn't complain too much. If I can master the nightmare of looking up words in a Chinese dictionary, the challenges of a Malay dictionary are really not that daunting.