KOKO & CUKELAT

As far as I can remember, "brown" is always warna koko or cukelat. Perang ( pay-rung) is never heard of. Perang the clash is always pronounced pperang with the syahdu or else it will be taken as the standard equivalent of peram - to keep something quite for a time. This is something like the process of making 100 year-old eggs or when they KIV some important files.

This is of course quite intriguing because I am sure there were plenty of brown things in nature. Were they never spoken of, colour-wise, in Terengganu? Sawo matang is not a Terengganu word. We call sawo (the fruit) ciku.The Kelantanese call it something else. It was sawo nilo I think. So why is brown cukelat or koko? To add to the confusion, cukelat in Terengganu is sweets as in cukelat angin (mint) or Terengganu's own cukelat nissang (the toffee-like sweets made from coconut palm sugar). So chocolates must have been introduced long enough to find a way into the language. Cocoa, as Derumo pointed out in his comment came later. It first came in tins to shops like Kedai Bbunga or Kedai M.Shariff. Cocoa was later cultivated in Jerangau. We used to see the Mat Salleh manager in town, looking a bit lost.

Incidently, since cukelat is sweets in Terengganu, chocolates like Cadbury's are called cukelat koko. Go figure.