Language in Brunei

False friends are words that are borrowed from one language into another, but then they undergo a change in meaning. Alternatively, they may...

The results of the Brunei-Cambridge 'A' levels were announced yesterday. Of the 610 candidates, 404 (66.2%) obtained at least one ...

I have previously discussed the use of 'pieces' in Brunei English, such as the following from The Brunei Times of 25/12/2011: The ...

Sometimes translators just give up when they try to deal with different kinds of food. Here is an extract from a brochure output by the Mini...

Here is a headline from page 2 of Media Permata of 26 July: Ada majikan tidak bayar 'overtime' pekerja which might be glossed as:...

I just read a short article in the Guardian Online ( here ) about the invented word 'oxt'. Apparently, if today is Friday, then ...

I recently saw this sentence on page 6 of the Media Permata of 3 July. It is 76 words long. Sepanjang bulan Ramadan ini, Jabatan Bomba dan...

While watching the World Cup, I am always struck by how many opaque idioms the commentators use: they're under the cosh (they're u...

I just wrote a reference for one of my students to study at York University, and the message that came back was: Thank you for taking the t...

One of the biggest problems for learners of a foreign language is when their first language has a superordinate word and the foreign languag...

I was just watching Chile against Australia in the World Cup, and the commentator (who seemed to be from Britain) constantly referred to the...

This picture (sent to me by Ishamina Athirah) is presumably advertising for a tailor, i.e. someone who cuts and sews. The trouble is that ...

On Linguist List ( here ) I just saw this opening pane from a comic strip: The posting is about the use of 'peak friend'. But what...

I just read a report that selfie , hashtag and tweet are now going to be included in the dictionary of Malay published by the Malaysian De...

Local languages in this part of the world typically fail to distinguish the gender of third person pronouns; so both 'he' and 's...

My most recent book, published by De Gruyter, was on Misunderstandings in ELF ( see here ). My PhD student, Ishamina Athirah, is now replica...

It always leaves me bemused when I see a line of Malay with no space between the words. This is from page 2 of the Media Permata of 19 May ...

I just read ( here ) that Vietnamese has a word for elder brother ( anh ) and elder sister ( chi ), but the same word for both younger broth...

Prefixes in Malay are highly productive, so it is easy to create new words which others can immediately understand. This morning I heard abo...

There is a hypothesis ( see here ) that we prefer typing with our right hand, and as a result, as more and more people have become accustome...