mamacang

07:35 Nov 9, 2011 

... for your explanation. In this case, I don't think the little boy is calling the woman--who is Dutch, not Indonesian--'mama' because he refers to his own mother as 'mama'. Because it also appears in the Malay-Chinese text to which I referred, and refers to a grandmother, I think it's a version of 'grandmother', 'grandma', 'granny', etc, like 'nenek'. My former homestay family in Padang have 3 kids who all call me 'Nek. I think maybe 'mamacang' is derived from Chinese, meaning the same thing. Maybe there's a contributor who is ethnic Chinese or Peranakan who can shed some light on this.

07:26 Nov 9, 2011 

In a family that does not strictly enforce proper calling, sometimes the children will call their grandma just like their mother calls her. I take my own family as example. My kids call my mother-in-law Amak (=mother), since my wife calls her so, and not force them to call her Anduang (=grandma for West Sumatran) instead. So, mamacang could just be mama + cang, the way the bride calls her mother. Perhaps cang refers to family name? (Mama Chang)