08 March 2009

Code-Mixing

Today is a national holiday in Brunei, to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.

According to the local Malay language newspaper Media Permata (9 March 2009, page 1), in his titah ('royal speech') to celebrate the event, His Majesty the Sultan of Brunei emphasised that constant pursuit of religious knowledge is important....

  untuk kita dapat survive selaku bangsa dan negara yang aman jaya
     for    us   can  survive    as    race    and country which peaceful
   "for us to be able to survive as a people and country that is peaceful"

I found this interesting linguistically. Why is the English word survive included in this titah?

Modern linguistic analysis suggests that code-mixing is the norm in language usage around the world, and such mixing of codes may be particularly common in South-East Asia. Indeed, it has been suggested that an emphasis on linguistic purity, sticking to a single language, might be a product of European nineteenth-century ideology, associated with the emergence of individual nation-states each with its own distinct language. So maybe His Majesty is just following common local usage in mixing a word of English into his titah.

One other thing: this example can be regarded as mixing not borrowing, because survive retains its English spelling. But if it were borrowed into Malay, what would it become? Maybe servaiv? That doesn't look quite right.

I note that archive becomes arkib in Malay ‒ note that the final [v] in the English becomes [b] in Malay, as [v] is a rare sound that only occurs in initial position in a few borrowed words: visa, van, vitamin ... So, what about the middle [v] from survive? Would that remain as [v] in Malay? And also, what about the vowel in the second syllable? Would it become [i] or [ai]?