Interjection of indigenous peoples
In Taiwan's indigenous society, we called each other “adju” as a Pinayuanan nickname for a friend. Just like “dude” in English, a way to be close to your people. In this world, there are ways to survive and regulations to follow once you want to fit in certain groups of people.
Like Sherman Alexie’s book, The toughest Indian in the world, he used common slang rez to mean their community of reservation, enit to emphasize the accent of Native American, to sound like you are one of them.
In Paiwan, we added “ai~sa”, ”ai~” “bo” before the sentence or after our conversation, it is also a way to distinguish ourselves from others.
As an urban indigenous myself, sometimes I am not quite following the tempo of my cousins and boyfriend’s conversation. Especially, the “ai” part, I do not know when to add them and follow their tempo, but I really enjoy talking to them in their cozy, funny way.
(to be continue)