Refute the opinion that blames the meaning of the gallon

What is the big transparent blue bottle that you placed on the dispenser? Gallon. What is the object called in English? Bottle of water gallon.

In English gallon of water bottle is a large bottle-shaped liquid storage container, gallon is a unit of liquid. Therefore, call a big bottle of mineral water filling like gallon considered false by people who understand English. Is it true?

Famous English dictionaries such as Merriam Webster, Oxford, Cambridge, Longman and Macmillan define gallon as a unit of measure of liquid. One gallon is 3,785 liters (in the United States) or 4,546 liters (in the United Kingdom). This definition is the same as the meaning gallon in the interior Large Indonesian dictionary (KBBI) V.

However, KBBI may not save the meaning gallon it is based on the meaning that circulates in the community. The majority of Indonesians interpret gallon as a bottle of mineral water with large filling capacity (10-19 liters), while the meaning gallon as an unpopular liquid unit and little used in this country.

Misleading labels can indeed be pinned on the meaning gallon which is used by Indonesians in relation to the meaning gallon in their mother tongue.

Indonesian has a lot of absorption words that are misinterpreted like that, for example words takjil, which means in Arabic "hurry up" (in the case of fasting), but is used by the majority of Indonesians in the sense of "food and drink to break the fast".

Another example is the word scientists, which means in Arabic "general scientific expert", and not just "Islamic scientific expert", as interpreted by Indonesian society and registered by KBBI.

Similarly with the word Ustadz, which means in Arabic "teacher in a broad sense", while in Indonesian, it means "religion teacher, especially Islamic teacher" because the teacher of other religions is never called Ustadz.

Such misunderstanding is not a mistake and is not a problem in Indonesian. The misunderstanding accepted by the linguistic community is not a mistake, but has become the language itself, as it has been agreed to be used in communication and to be approved as an acceptable form. Remember that language is an agreement.

Such misunderstanding is acceptable because the Indonesian language community does not use the meaning of the word according to the meaning of its native language, such as gallon (liquid dose unit), takjil (iftar hurried), scientists (scientists in general), and Ustadz (teacher in general).

It is therefore useless to rectify the misunderstanding of the meaning of such words of absorption, much less to blame it, since the meaning does not run up against other meanings in Indonesian.

A misunderstanding of the meaning of the word absorption to correct is a relatively new word of absorption, which means that it has not been adhered to Indonesian speakers or who He has already changed the meaning of the word in his native language.

If you wish to absorb new words of absorption (which have not been used or are still rarely used), absorb them with the meaning that corresponds to the original language. However, if the majority of speakers do not want to use the original meaning and create a new meaning from the word absorption, it is up to the speaker to choose because the language belongs to him.

Another misconception that needs to be corrected is the wrong meaning of words that conflict with the true meaning of a word, for example indifferent (meaning "care", but often misused as meaning "no matter").

Insensitive (meaning not moving, but often used wrongly with the meaning "move", for example do not rubThis error must be corrected to avoid any misunderstanding in the communication or any misunderstanding on the part of the author of the communication.

Back to the question gallon, Indonesian has no specific name other than gallon to call reusable mineral water storage bottles because these containers are not products of Indonesian culture.

Indonesia has many titles for water tanks, cultural products or cultural products of various ethnic groups, including ships, jars, jars / tapaian, wave, barrel, steel, jambang, pasu, pitchers, leaks, pitchers geleta, guri, kumba and jun.

There is also jerrycans, which is absorbed by Dutch, jerrycan. However, none of these names represents the physical form of the container called gallon. So it's better KBBI add meaning gallon: large bottles that are usually used to store mineral water filling.

With regard to the designation of large mineral water storage bottles, there are only two types of gallons for the Indonesian population, namely large gallons (18 and 19 liters capacity) and small gallons (with a capacity of 10 and 12 liters). There are bottles of mineral water in packages with a capacity of 240 milliliters (small bottles), 600 milliliters (medium bottles) and 1.6 liters / 1600 milliliters (large bottles) called bottles of water.

Similarly in English: water bottles with a capacity of 240 ml to 1.6 liters are called plastic bottle of water. Bottled water that is not a packaging is called bottle of water. Specially for refillable mineral water bottles with a capacity of 18/19 liters Gallonot /bottle of water galexactly 5 gallon of water because of gallon of water the capacity is 5 gallons or 19 liters; while the bottle of refined mineral water of a capacity of 10/12 liters is called half gallon water bottle.