Language in Brunei

Opposite the Maggie Cafe on the bank of the Limbang River, I saw this sign, which tells you in three different languages not to throw rubbis...

I just went for a brief trip to Limbang, the small town located in the strip of Sarawak (Malaysia) that separates the two parts of Brunei. H...

This is a trilingual sign at the entrance to the restaurant of the Merawap Hot Springs resort, near Lawas. The Chinese constitute only about...

One of the curses of being an academic is that I have to know the background to things. If you take me to botanic gardens, instead of admiri...

In my previous post, I mentioned the owner of the Merawap Hot Springs resort, near Lawas. His name is Alfred, and his picture is on the righ...

I just spent two days at the Merarap Hot Springs resort in Sarawak (Malaysia), halfway between Lawas (on the coast) and Ba'kelalan (near...

In an earlier blog ( here ), I mentioned pokok ('tree') in the phrase gaji pokok ('basic wage') and suggested that the log...

In an earlier blog ( here ), I discussed the Wallace's Flying Frog I had seen at the UBD Belalong Research Centre in Temburong. Then in ...

This is the Brunei Street Directory, compiled by my UBD colleague, Kazimierz Becek in 2008. It is a splendid resource that often enables me ...

Sometimes the components of a compound noun seem to hard to understand. Malay has lots of compounds. For example, matahari ('sun') ...

This is the label on the top of a box of strawberries I recently bought at Mabohai Supersave in BSB: I have a couple of questions about this...

The Saturday edition of the Media Permata newspaper always carries a summary of the sermon delivered in the mosques the previous day. On pa...

This is my grandson, Oliver. He is now two years and three months old. Although he lives in England, my wife and I get to see him every week...

How many words are there in English? This is actually a meaningless question. There is someone in the USA who claims that the millionth word...

It's a long time since I mentioned food. Well, since Feb 4 actually ( here ). And what would a Brunei blog be without some discussion of...

A couple of days ago, I sent a reminder about a forthcoming test to my first-year students, and one of my colleagues (jokingly) suggested th...

Bukit Shahbandar is a popular site for hill walking about half an hour out of the centre of BSB. Between Pondoks ('huts') 4 and 5 of...

This is the sign above a shop in Kiulap, near the centre of BSB in Brunei. The standard English would be 'Fresh fruit and vegetables...

In a recent post ( here ), I mentioned two versions of HM the Sultan's name, the shorter of which took a television newsreader 5 seconds...

Here's a picture from page 3 of the 6 April edition of Media Permata , the national Malay language daily in Brunei. The headline says ...