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njai
The ''njai'' ((:ɲai); Perfected Spelling: ''nyai'') were women who were kept as housekeepers, companions, and concubines in the Dutch East Indies (modern-day Indonesia). In the original Balinese, the word ''njai'' meant "sister", but the term later took a more specific meaning. Author Rob Nieuwenhuys described the position of the njai as always subservient, being the white man's housekeeper and companion, before she was his concubine.
==Terminology and description==
The word ''njai'' (also ''nyai'', ''njaie'', ''nyaie'', ''nyahi'' or ''nyi'') comes from a Balinese word meaning sister. The ''Great Dictionary of the Indonesian Language of the Language Center'' gives three definitions for ''njai'': as a term for referring to a married or unmarried woman, as a term for referring to a woman older than the speaker, and for the concubine of a non-Indonesian. It is this last definition which is used here, a definition which gained traction in the 17th century when Balinese ''njais'' first became common in the colonial capital of Batavia (now Jakarta). The word, in discussion of the Indies, is sometimes simply translated as "mistress".
A variety of other terms were used to refer to the ''njai'', with a varying degree of positive and negative connotations. In the 19th century the term ''inlandse huishoudster'', or simply ''huishoudster'' (housekeeper), was common. The ''njai'' were also known as ''moentji'', from the Dutch diminutive ''mondje'', meaning "mouth", and the more negative ''snaar'' ("strings"); both referred to the ''njais verbal propensities. As the ''njai'' could also serve as a translator and language teacher, terms such as ''boek'' ("book") and ''woordenbooek'' ("dictionary") are also noted. Objectification of the ''njai'' was found in terms such as ''meubel'' ("furniture") and ''inventarisstuk'' ("inventory items").
Not all ''njai'' were necessarily native Indonesian--in Madelon Szekely-Lulofs's 1931 novel ''Rubber'', ''njai'' Kiku San is Japanese.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「njai」の詳細全文を読む
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