22 September 2011

bajet

In my previous posting, I asked the question: when does a word that is borrowed from English become accepted as a word of Malay? How often does a word such as so need to be used in Malay before it is regarded as a word in Malay?

In that posting, I referred to the subtitles of a film. The same issue occurs with the subtitles of news reports. For example, here are two consecutive clips from the news report of 3 August 2009 from the Singapore channel Suria (available from YouTube here):
The subtitles suggest she said
Daripada kursus ini, saya banyak mempelajari macam mana untuk mengatur perbelanjaan keluarga dan perniagaan.
which might be translated as "from this course, I learned many things such as how to organise the expenses of the family and business."

But she doesn't actually say mengatur perbelanjaan ('organise expenses'). Instead she says membajetkan. Because this word comes from the English word budget, the writer of the subtitles clearly feels it is not good Malay.

Indeed, I can't find bajet in either of my dictionaries, even though I have heard it used quite often in spoken Malay. So, at what point might bajet be accepted as a word of Malay? How often does it need to be used, and by whom, for it to be regarded as a true word of Malay?