Gender
Gender
Indonesian does not make use of grammatical gender, and there are only selected words that use natural gender. For instance, the same word is used for he/him and she/her (dia or ia) or for his and her (dia, ia or -nya). No real distinction is made between "girlfriend" and "boyfriend", both pacar (although more colloquial terms as cewek girl/girlfriend and cowok boy/boyfriend can also be found). A majority of Indonesian words that refer to people generally have a form that does not distinguish between the sexes. However, unlike English, distinction is made between older or younger.
There are some words that have gender: for instance, putri means "daughter" while putra means "son"; pramugara means "male flight attendant" while pramugari means "female flight attendant". Another example is olahragawan, which means "sportsman", versus olahragawati, meaning "sportswoman". Often, words like these (or certain suffixes such as "-a" and "-i" or "-wan" and "wati") are absorbed from other languages (in these cases, from Sanskrit through the Old Javanese language). In some regions of Indonesia such as Sumatra and Jakarta, abang (a gender-specific term meaning "older brother") is commonly used as a form of address for older siblings/males, while kakak (a non-gender specific term meaning "older sibling") is often used to mean "older sister". Similarly, more direct influences from other languages, such as Javanese and Chinese, have also seen further use of other gendered words in Indonesian. For example: Mas ("older brother"), Mbak ("older sister"), Koko ("older brother") and Cici ("older sister").