Kedayan

I have been doing some work on the pronunciation of Kedayan. (See here for more details.)

One of the most salient features of Kedayan is the absence of any /r/ sound, in contrast with the other indigenous languages of Brunei, all of which have some kind of /r/ sound. As a result, rendah ('low') in Standard Malay is andah in Kedayan, and roti ('bread') is uti. (Like Brunei Malay, Kedayan only has three vowels: /i, a, u/.)

In the recording on which the analysis is based, in the phrase Si Angin Utaa pun ('the North Wind, in contrast'), we find Standard Malay utara ('north') pronounced as [utaa], as expected, with no /r/ sound:

However, in the phrase kuat dai kadia ('stronger than the other'), we unexpectedly find dai ('from', 'than') pronounced as [daɾi], with a medial tapped /r/ sound:

One possibility is that the speaker is influenced by Brunei Malay, which has a salient /r/ sound initially, medially and finally. One then wonders: how extensively spoken nowadays is pure Kedayan, uninfluenced by the other indigenous languages of Brunei?

digraphs

My year-one UBD exam had the following question:

A digraph is two letters in the spelling that are used to represent a single sound. What is the digraph that is used in most cases in English to represent the velar nasal?

The correct answer to this is 'ng', but of the 49 students taking the exam, only 6 gave this answer. Instead, 36 wrote gave the answer /ŋ/ (while the remaining 7 wrote something else).

I don't get this – how is /ŋ/ 'two letters'? I don't understand why students are so bad at reading the question.

Well, it's only worth 1 mark, and many of the 36 who wrote /ŋ/ did really well on the rest of the exam, so some of them should get an A grade. But still, why don't they read the question?

utod

Yesterday, I went on a Brunei Nature Society outing, to visit the sago factory in Tutong District. One of the highlights was the chance to try the delicious (?) sago grub, known locally as utod.

Now, where does the word utod come from? It can't be Malay, as native words of Malay cannot end with /d/. While there are some Malay words that end with /d/, such as masjid (mosque), abad (century) and wujud (exist), these are all borrowed words, mostly from Arabic. While Malay can certainly have /t/ at the end of a word, such as bukit (hill), empat (four), and tempat (place), /d/ is not possible.

So, where does utod come from? My guess is it's from Dusun. Dusun can certainly have /d/ at the end of a word, as in talid (sprouting branch) (see here); so maybe utod as well.

fasten

This morning, I was listening to presentations from three of my students who have been on attachment with Royal Brunei, and the following sentence was mentioned:

We would like everyone to fasten your seatbelts.

How should you pronounce 'fasten'? Standard pronunciation is [fɑːsən] (or [fæsən] for American English); but my student pronounced it as [fɑːstən] with a [t], using what might be called spelling pronunciation. (See here for more on spelling pronunciation.)

The Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (Wells, 2008) does not list this possibility with a [t], even as a non-standard variant. But does that make it wrong? My guess is that it is quite common in this region, and it is probably more easily understood than the standard pronunciation, especially for people from China, Japan and Korea. If that is the case, then pronunciation with a [t] should be encouraged, even if it is not standard. Intelligibility is the key, never mind what dictionaries suggest.

Similarly, 'often' traditionally had no [t], but now it does for 27% of speakers in the UK and 22% in the USA (Wells, 2008, p. 560); and my guess is that this number is increasing, so that use of [t] in 'often' will soon become the norm. I also predict that 'fasten' will follow suit one day, and maybe 'listen' and 'castle' as well. Listening pronunciation is a well-established trend; so Royal Brunei cabin attendants who have a [t] in 'fasten' may be at the forefront of changing pronunciation.