Asking directions in Balinese

Learning some Basa Bali (Balinese) will win you friends and also help you travel in Bali. This is especially true when in village areas and talking with old people.

The other day I wrote that the usual way for a Balinese person to talk about direction revolves around the mountains and the ocean. kaja (toward the mountains, or north if in Kuta area), kelod (towards the ocean, or south if in the Kuta area. This isn’t a scientific system by any means. They weren’t using a GPS when they thought this up.

So basically you can think of kaja (north), kelod (south), kangin (east), kauh (west), for people living in south Bali. When asking for directions things change a bit. The prefix ‘ng’ is plopped onto the word, in place of its first letter, and the suffix ‘ang’ is added to the end. The word ‘kauh‘, meaning ‘west’, becomes ‘ngauhang‘ which means ‘towards the west’ or ‘westward’.

Similarly, kangin becomes nganginang, kaja becomes ngajanang, and kelod becomes ngelodang.

The prefix ‘d’ means ‘facing’.

Kauh becomes dauh which means ‘facing west’. Similarly, dangin is facing east, daja is facing north and delod is facing south.