The voices of frogs

It’s not the most interesting story in the world, but here goes.

While doing fieldwork on the Makassarese language for my PhD, one night the frogs outside my room were so loud I couldn’t sleep. In the morning I told my friend Udin taena kutinro ri bangngi nasaba’ tumpanga ‘I didn’t sleep because of the frogs’. He looked surprised and said apa napare’ tumpanga? ‘what were the frogs doing?’

Were they in my room? Were they climbing on me? Had I eaten too many? Was I having frog-related dreams?

It turned out I had to be specific and say ... nasaba’ sa’rana tumpanga ‘because of the voices of the frogs’.
It tickled me for two reasons. One is that Makassarese is generally very tolerant of ambiguity — people will work out from context what the intended meaning is. And innumerable times I had found myself as a listener or reader, mid-story, having lost track completely of who was doing what. But when I try out a rather innocuous seeming sentence? No, that contains an intolerable ambiguity, which must be spelled out precisely.
The other reason is of course that it would take a lot more than (the voices of) frogs to keep most Indonesians awake, so fair enough, Udin wouldn’t immediately jump to that conclusion.

There aren’t any frogs right outside my window these days, but I hear their voices every evening, in the field out the back. Unless they are drowned out by karaoke from drunken neighbours.