20 April 2020

Penjarak(k)an Sosial

A few days ago, I discussed the Malay for 'social distancing'. Apparently, it is penjarakan sosial.

Unfortunately, penjarakan is ambiguous. The root could be jarak ('distant'), in which case penjarakan means 'distance'; or the root could be penjara ('jail'), in which case penjarakan means 'to imprison'. It is really unfortunate that the word for social distancing also means to imprison society!

In Brunei (and maybe elsewhere?), they have resolved this by using the term penjarakkan sosial. Now, you could say this is an error, as you cannot add the suffix -kan to the adjective jarak. But at least it avoids the ambiguity of penjarakan.