Brunei Malay
| Brunei Malay | |
|---|---|
| Kedayan | |
| Bahasa Melayu Brunei | |
| Native to | Brunei, Malaysia |
| Ethnicity | Bruneian Malay |
|
Native speakers
|
(270,000 cited 1984–2013) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | brun1242 |
Area where Brunei Malay is spoken
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Brunei Malay (Bahasa Melayu Brunei) is the most widely spoken language in Brunei and a lingua franca in some parts of East Malaysia, such as Labuan, Limbang and Lawas. Though Standard Malay is promoted as the official language of Brunei, Brunei Malay is socially dominant and it is currently replacing the minority languages of Brunei, including the Dusun and Tutong languages. It is quite divergent from Standard Malay to the point where it is almost mutually unintelligible with it.
The consonants of Brunei Malay are shown in the following table.
Some analysts exclude /w/ and /j/ from this table on the basis that they are 'margin high vowels', while others include /w/ but exclude /j/.
All these consonants can occur in initial position except /h/. While /h/ can occur in final position, its absence from initial position means that Standard Malay hutan ('forest') is utan in Brunei Malay, and Standard Malay hitam ('black') is itam.
All the consonants can occur in word-final position apart from the palatal sounds /tʃ dʒ ɲ/ and the voiced plosives /b d ɡ/ (except in a few borrowed words such as mac ('March') and kabab ('kebab')).
Brunei Malay has a three-vowel system: /i/, /a/, /u/. Acoustic variation in the realisation of these vowels is shown in the plot on the right, based on the reading of a short text by a single female speaker.
While /i/ is distinct from the other two vowels, there is substantial overlap between /a/ and /u/. This is partly because of the vowel in the first syllable of words such as maniup ('to blow') which can be realised as [ə]. Indeed, the Brunei Malay dictionary uses an 'e' for the prefix in this word, listing it as meniup, though other analyses prefer to show prefixes such as this with 'a', on the basis that Brunei Malay just has three vowels.
Brunei Malay, Kedayan and Kampong Ayer can be regarded as different dialects of Malay. Brunei Malay is used by the numerically and politically dominant Brunei people, who traditionally lived on water, while Kedayan is used by the land-dwelling farmers, and the Kampong Ayer dialect is used by the inhabitants of the river north of the capital. It has been estimated that 94% of the words of Brunei Malay and Kedayan are lexically related.
1 "Bini-bini" is exclusively used in Brunei to refer to a lady. In Malaysia and Singapore, it is an informal way to refer to one's wives or a group of married women.
The vocabulary of Brunei Malay has been collected and published by several western explorers in Borneo including Pigafetta in 1521, De Crespigny in 1872, Charles Hose in 1893, A. S. Haynes in 1900, Sidney H. Ray in 1913, H. B. Marshall in 1921, and G. T. MacBryan in 1922, and some Brunei Malay words are included in "A Malay-English Dictionary" by R. J. Wilkinson.
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