Language in Brunei

I've never understood why headline writers favour densely packed noun phrases. Take this one that I saw on the Guardian website today: T...

The pronunciation of words borrowed from English into Malay sometimes affects the way those words are pronounced in English by speakers of M...

This headline, from the Media Permata of 19 February, 2016, p.1, caught me out: 'Child dies in Fire' When I read it, I assumed tha...

I just learned two new words of Malay: curhat , 'to pour your heart out': a blend of curah ('to pour out') + hati ('...

This is a picture taken by James McLellan in Limbang, which he discussed in his recent FASS seminar. (For more details, see here .) The se...

There has for many years been a contrast between using an adjective premodifier for nationalities ('Spanish troops', 'Chinese te...

An authoritative book on English spelling, Upward and Davidson (2011, p. 235) states that 'bamboo' comes from the Malay word bambu ....

As is well known, Chinese people have an aversion for number 4, as 'four' in Chinese sounds like 'death'. So what do hotels ...

In my previous post, I suggested that use of 'gravida' to refer to pregnant women in a sign in Taiwan arose out of over-enthusiastic...

I just spent two weeks in the south of Taiwan, where there seems to be a genuine effort to encourage a range of languages. In the subway tra...

This is the central section of the mural on the front of the library building in the middle of Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei. T...

In Malay, belas is the suffix given to numerals to indicate the numbers 11 to 19, so 11 is sebelas , 12 is dua belas , and so on. Then the...

When I started out as an academic, I believed it was my duty to do research and publish it, but I found self-promotion tacky. Well, I guess ...

It is interesting when a calque form one language into another involves a shift in meaning. In English ivory tower always has a negative co...

This photo, of an Australian coffee shop in London, was sent to me by Benjamin Tucker: The use of an -ie (or -y) suffix is well-known in A...

In a report by the BBC on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) ( see here ), near the top there is a link to a video which starts by showing ...

Here is an extract from an article on page 2 of Media Permata of 2 November 2015, about activities to be held in Tutong District: Manakala...

My Brunei Malay dictionary shows some words with 'Ig', to indicate that they come from English. While the origin of some is obvious ...

In American English, cooties is used as a term of abuse by children, indicating some other child is abnormal in some way. Typical usage mig...

A friend was negotiating with an Indian grass-cutter for the fellow to come and cut his grass, and he got the following text reply: Sar tum...