It's Raja Empat not Ampat...

To all the liveaboards, travel agents, scuba divers and copywriters... it's 2009. Maybe it's time for the 14 boats and numerous dive websites and mags and such to finally get the spelling correct in Bahasa Indonesia. The story is the Dutch or English came up with that based on what was heard of the number 4 vs the modern spelling which was officialized back in the 40s. Maybe 60 years later, we can drop the old colonial spellings ( since the Indonesians finally decided to keep it as Papua Barat and Papua province, we can also drop Irian Jaya). I'm sure the Papuans will appreciate it.

So it still means 4, just a different spelling? So you can still type R4 if you wanna be cool?

Alex

I prefer R.E. now.

i was told Ampat is the local dialect way of spelling it..

Bali its papat

Bugis is eppa

Sundanese is opat

dunno

Sure, some of the locals still call the place Irian Jaya because they grew up with it being called Irian Jaya, older folk call it Irian Barat.

Ampat was the spelling deemed by the Dutch to represent the way 4 was pronounced in the region. I'm no etymologist but I did read a few books about the area and that story came up in all of them. Same anti-colonial source? Perhaps. Still, there's an official language called Bahasa Indonesia now... let's use that one until they change the name YET again to something else.

Other slight irritant... It's Yogjakarta, not Jogjakarta (anymore).

I prefer R.E. now.

Nice.

Adu! Saya tidak tahu.

Kenapa masala?

Dan Lembeh? Lembeh Island atau Pulau Lembeh?

Walaupun saya serlalu tanya sama bertanya :D

So it still means 4, just a different spelling? So you can still type R4 if you wanna be cool?

 

Alex

Hey Alex a R4 in Spain is this

Adu! Saya tidak tahu.

 

Kenapa masala?

 

Dan Lembeh? Lembeh Island atau Pulau Lembeh?

 

 

Walaupun saya serlalu tanya sama bertanya

Terima kasih, Alex!!

Apa kabar?

MY Indonesian friends all call it Ampat. Who am I to argue with THEM?

Saya nama Mike, tidak Alex

Nama Saya, not saya nama...

shut it

All the local people we know in Sorong and surrounds call it Raja Ampat, so we will stick with the A.....