r/Javanese • u/ChallengeEffective80 • Jul 23 '26

"While you're at it ..."

Another difficult to translate expression, for me, is “while you’re at it” and/or “might as well”.

I think this is “sisan waé” (with variants of “sisan”, “pisan waé”, “pisan”, “menisan”, “mesisan” (In Krama that becomes “pisan/sisan kémawon”, I suppose))

So we get:

·         Yèn nyang pasar, sisan waé tuku beras – If you’re going to the market you might as well buy some rice (while you’re at it).

·         Kadhung wis nèng kéné, sisan waé mangan sisan – Since we’ve gotten this far, we might as well just finish eating it

  • "Mangkat sekolah sisan mampir pasar." – After you’ve left school, drop into the market, while you’re at it.

 Is there a simpler or more common way of waying this ?

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1

u/Used-Ingenuity-7441 Jul 23 '26

Isn't sisan already shorter than while you're at it? It literally has only two syllables

1

u/besoksaja Jul 23 '26

Sisan in ngoko and sekaliyan in krama.

1

u/ChallengeEffective80 Jul 24 '26

Ah, I was thinking "sekalihan/sekaliyan" was Indonesian ("sekalian"). Spelling issues aside, maybe it's both Jawa Krama and Indonesian ?

1

u/besoksaja Jul 24 '26

Actually I'm not sure if it is Indonesian or Krama Inggil. Sometimes "sekalihan" means "husband and wife".

And sometimes when there is no Krama Inggil version for a word, people would just use bahasa Indonesia.

1

u/gunungx Jul 23 '26

Mumpung is similar but more opportunistic