25 November 2019

Kedayan

I have been doing some work on the pronunciation of Kedayan. (See here for more details.)

One of the most salient features of Kedayan is the absence of any /r/ sound, in contrast with the other indigenous languages of Brunei, all of which have some kind of /r/ sound. As a result, rendah ('low') in Standard Malay is andah in Kedayan, and roti ('bread') is uti. (Like Brunei Malay, Kedayan only has three vowels: /i, a, u/.)

In the recording on which the analysis is based, in the phrase Si Angin Utaa pun ('the North Wind, in contrast'), we find Standard Malay utara ('north') pronounced as [utaa], as expected, with no /r/ sound:

However, in the phrase kuat dai kadia ('stronger than the other'), we unexpectedly find dai ('from', 'than') pronounced as [daɾi], with a medial tapped /r/ sound:

One possibility is that the speaker is influenced by Brunei Malay, which has a salient /r/ sound initially, medially and finally. One then wonders: how extensively spoken nowadays is pure Kedayan, uninfluenced by the other indigenous languages of Brunei?