Language in Brunei

I was listening to the midday news on RTB Nasional FM today, and once again I heard Calais pronounced as /kʌlaɪs/ rather than the expected /...

I have sometimes previously discussed the tension between use of a native word of Malay and an equivalent borrowed word (e.g. petua vs. ...

My granddaughter, Elsie, aged 5 and a half, loves to write. Here is a little story she wrote on yellow stick-it sheets while we were visitin...

Faux Amis ('false friends') are words that involve a shift in meaning after they have been borrowed from one language to another. Or...

At the UBD Convocation yesterday, I was interested to hear how many English words occurred in the Sultan's titah , which you would expec...

This is a picture drawn by my granddaughter, Elsie, aged 6. Note how she spells Grandma and Grandpa. She is following the way she says the w...

In my phonetics class yesterday, I asked my students to transcribe 'complicated'; and half of them used /æ/ instead of /eɪ/ in the t...

I've previously mentioned the problem of adjectives and verbs ending in 'c'. If you want to add 'ed' or 'ing' to...

In the new Gadong Health Centre, the walls of the waiting rooms are decorated with pictures and advice on healthy eating, ways to protect yo...

My Malay dictionary tells me that platform is a word in Malay. But how is it pronounced? I have often heard it said with an initial /f/ by...

In a recent post, I discussed the lack of concern by Brunei newscasters about how they pronounce foreign names; and I had always been under ...

This is the directory of departments for the First Emporiurm Department Store in BSB. Luggages? I would never use 'luggage' in the...

This is the headline from page M6 of the Media Permata of 4 July 2016: Corak ringkas, warna pastel pilihan busana Hari Raya which might b...

The newsreaders at RTB (Radio Television Brunei) take great pride in pronouncing local names correctly. For example, it would be a major fau...

In Brunei, initialisms are very common. Examples include UBD (Universiti Brunei Darussalam), BSB (Bandar Seri Begawan), and OGDC (Oil and Ga...

Last week, I was in Myanmar. This is the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. Our guide told us that there is a large ruby at the top, and Myanmar pr...

Having been in Brunei for nearly nine years now, I like to think I have adjusted to the local pronunciation of English. However, I still get...

Sometimes, headlines can be really confusing. I just saw this headline on the Guardian online of Tuesday, 16 February, 2016. (Although it is...

I recently went on a walk around Bukit Mentiri, and it is splendid to see that lots of the trees are labeled, not just with the scientific n...

The latest FIFA rankings for world football have been published, and Brunei Darussalam is ranked at No 195 (out of 210), a fall of 11 places...