Language in Brunei

The modern-day extra-long noun-phrase build-up phenomenon for newspaper headlines has been observed for articles in English ( see here ). So...

However often I read the Malay newspaper, I still find it hard to parse text where the words are compacted together with little space betwee...

A colleague asked me: what is meant in English by 'Digital Image Processing'? Is it the digital processing of images (i.e. 'digi...

In my last two posts, I have been discussing common phrases in English (such as 'freezing cold') and how they can be said quite fast...

In my previous post, I discussed the fact that 'flaming hot' uttered by a male speaker from Hong Kong was not understood by a female...

I have recently been doing quite a bit of work on intelligibility, and some of my data comes from a male speaker from Hong Kong talking to a...

What does 42 represent? Well, we all know it is 7 times 6. And some of us know that it is the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and Eve...

There is a recent analysis in Language Log ( here ) of linguistics dissertations submitted and job opportunities advertised, based on work d...

Did you know that texting is the second most common use of a mobile phone? ( See here ). So, you might ask, what's that most common use...

While I was in Singapore, I visited the Gardens by the Bay. This is what the super-trees look like at night: I know we are supposed to be i...

Just recently, I was in Singapore for a few days. The breakfast in the place I was staying offered 'vegetarian water' and 'veget...

Here's a phonological puzzle for you. Consider the pronunciation of the following words of English: wag swagger wacky quack swanky swan ...

The cupertino effect is when a word gets changed by an over-enthusiastic spell checker. The term derives from early spell checkers convertin...

In a previous posting ( here ), I discussed abbreviations found in Malay reference materials such as dictionaries, and I suggested that the ...

I love crash blossoms (newspaper headlines that are easily mis-parsed on first reading). Here is one I saw in today's BBC World News si...

A never event is a medical term for an event that should not have happened. According Wikipedia , never events are 'inexcusable outcome...

In my previous post, I discussed whether texting might be harmful to literacy. The view among many linguists is that the creative and playfu...

Did you know that, in 2010, the average American teenager sent over 3000 text messages per month? ( See here ). That means about 100 message...

Mixing between English and Malay is the norm in informal language in Brunei. As an example, see this sentence from Tiger Lim's blog , ta...

I recently saw the word kesalingbolehtukaran ('interchangeability') in a newspaper article discussing the currencies of Brunei and ...