LingPoet: Journal of Linguistics and Literary Research Vol.
No.
3, 2021 | 1 Ae 12 LingPoet: Journal of Linguistics and Literary Research English.
Arabic, and Chinese Loanwords in Brunei Malay Balazs Huszka1*.
Norazmie Yusof2.
Mohamed Mohiel-Din Ahmed 3.
Tay
Kok Jun4
,1,2,3,4
Language Centre.
Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
Brunei Darussalam Abstract.
Brunei Malay is a unique Malay dialect spoken not only in Brunei Darussalam, but also in neighboring parts of Borneo.
Although extensive data are available on lexical borrowings in Standard Malay and Indonesian, surprisingly.
Brunei Malay has not been studied in this regard.
Our paper aims to fill this gap by identifying English.
Arabic and Chinese loanwords in the only available dictionary (Kamus Bahasa Melayu Brune.
had looked into the linguistic distribution and word classes of the borrowed lexis, and understood that the main borrower was Arabic, followed by English.
however, only a few words of Chinese origin could be found in the corpus.
The most prominent word class was nouns, with a significantly lower number of verbs and adjectives.
In the last part of our paper we are going to give some examples for usage of these loanwords in context.
Keywords: Brunei Malay.
Lexical Borrowing.
Loan Words.
Linguistic Distribution Received .
Jul 2.
| Revised .
Aug 2.
| Accepted .
Aug 2.
Introduction Lexical borrowing and its types Lexical borrowings are one of the most noticeable consequences of cultures and languages coming into contact (Hoffer, 2.
In most of the cases, the core vocabulary, i.
that small set of words referring to the most basic human activities .
ike to eat, to drink or to slee.
and direct or directly observable surroundings .
nimals, sun, moon, forest, riverA), is less likely to be Usually, new lexical items will be adopted, when the receiver language lacks these words to express objects, concepts or activities that have been introduced by another culture .
he Interestingly, nouns are the most frequently borrowed part of speech.
the reason being, according to Myers-Scotton .
2, cited by Haspelmath, 2.
, that Authey receive, not assign, thematic rolesAy .
gent, patient, locationA), hence.
Autheir insertion in another language is less disruptive of predicate-argument structure .
)Ay.
Adjectives .
ungry, thirstyA), adverbs *Corresponding author at: Language Centre.
Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
Brunei Darussalam E-mail address: balazs.
huszka@ubd.
Copyright A 2021 Published by Talenta Publisher, e-ISSN: 2745-8296 Journal Homepage: http://talenta.
id/lingpoet .
ere, tomorrowA) and basic verbs .
ike the ones abov.
, on the other hand, are more likely to be part of the core vocabulary than nouns.
Verbs, furthermore, tend to have an elaborate system of valency .
ypes and numbers of argument.
, and, occasionally .
t least in some language.
intricate inflections, that might impede their incorporation into other languages.
It is important to highlight that there are languages that are more receptive towards lexical borrowings than English, for instance, incorporated a large number of words from other languages like Latin .
bdomen, piousA).
French .
heatre, caramelA).
Germanic languages .
ollar, geistA).
whereas Chinese has a considerably smaller number of lexical borrowings.
In theory, there are four possible ways to borrow lexical items from one language into another:
Loanword is a word that has been adopted in a language .
r language.
from another language in a way that its original meaning is .
ore or les.
preserved, e.
Arabic A EEOIOAal-kmAAo Ae English alchemy.
It should be pointed out that loanwords are different from foreign words, because loanwords go through a three-tier assimilation process .
n sound shape, grammar, and in orthograph.
to become a new lexical item in the borrowing language (Bussmann, 2.
We are talking about a loanshift, when a native word adopts a new meaning due to the influence of a foreign language / concept, e.
the English word Easter .
astre in Old Englis.
, now referring to an important Christian festival, was originally the name of the pre-Christian era goddess of spring.
Loan blend is very unique type of borrowing where one part of a compound will be kept as in the source language.
however, another part of the compound will be translated into the borrowing language, e.
English gumtree Ae Barossa German .
poken by the descendants of German settlers in South Australi.
gumbaum, in which gum- is borrowed from English, but the second part of the compound -baum (AotreeA.
will be translated into Barossa German (Richards & Schmidt, 2.
On the other hand, loan translation .
ften referred to as calcqu.
is an exact morphemeby-morpheme / word-by-word rendering of a word or an expression into another language, e.
Latin omnipotens (Aoall mightyA.
Ae English almighty .
The Malay language and its loanwords Malay (Bahasa Melay.
is a Western Austronesian language with approximately 300 million It is spoken in parts of Maritime Southeast Asia .
alled also Nusantar.
, primarily in Malaysia.
Brunei.
Singapore and in Indonesia .
here it is called Indonesia.
however, it is widely used in Southern Thailand and, to some extent, it is understood in other countries of the region as well.
In the pre-colonial era.
Malay served as the lingua franca of commerce in this archipelago, not only for the inhabitants of the many islands, but also for foreign traders .
Alisjahbana 1976: 32, cited by Lowenberg 1.
Based on stone inscriptions found in Sumatra.
Java and in the Malay Peninsula, it is safe to say that during the Srivijaya Empire that existed from the seventh to the thirteenth century A.
(!) and that, from its capital in todayAos Palembang in Southern Sumatra.
Indonesia, controlled large parts of the archipelago.
Old Malay was already a quasi-official widespread language in the region .
Although contemporary regional varieties of Malay might show significant differences .
n pronunciation and vocabulary in particula.
, they are still more or less mutually intelligible.
In the Preface to his book.
A Manual of the Malay Language.
Maxwell .
4: V) states the following: AuThe construction of the [Mala.
language and the general body of words remain [A] the same, but in every state [A] there are peculiar words and expressions and variations of accent and pronunciation which belong distinctively to it.
Ay In Kelantanese Malay, which is spoken in the state of Kelantan in the northeastern part of the Malay Peninsula and in the neighboring southern provinces of Thailand (Pattani.
Songkhla.
Narathiwat.
Yal.
, for instance, the word-final syllables -an, -am and -ang will be pronounced as a long, often nasalized closed-mid / near-front -e: sembilan Ae sembile (AonineA.
, makan Ae make (Aoto eatA.
Similarly, in Kelantanese Malay there is quite a number of distinct words that cannot be found in the majority of Malay dialects: piti.
(AomoneyA.
, ambo (AoIA.
In general, we can assert that Malay has adopted a substantial amount of foreign lexis.
According to Winstedt .
, the oldest of these borrowings are from Sanskrit, covering Aureligious, moral, and intellectual ideas but some astronomical, mathematical and botanical terms, a court vocabulary, and a large number of everyday words .
Ay, e.
(AoreligionA.
, (AobetweenA.
, (AofirmamentA.
, (AomillionA.
, (AopomegranateA.
, puteri (AoprincessA.
, manusia (AomanA.
Loanwords from Arabic usually refer to religion (Isla.
and religious practices, e.
sholat (AoprayerA.
, sujud (AoprostrationA.
, adat (AocustomsA.
In literature, and in the high register of Malay, a small number of Persian loanwords also occur: biaperi (AomerchantA.
, lasykar (AosoldieryA.
, serban (AoturbanA.
Moreover, the everyday language also absorbed a few lexical elements from Persian: pahlawan (AoheroA.
, kenduri (AofeastA.
, kahwin (Aoto marryA.
Hindi and Tamil loanwords are also present, although their number is comparatively small, e.
: jori (H) (Aoa pair of horsesA.
, ketumbar (T) .
Chinese supplies some lexical borrowings respectively.
which, interestingly, apply to elements of the Chinese culture for the main part, e.
loteng (Aoupstairs floorA.
, kongsi (AosocietyA.
, .
pekong (AoidolA.
Furthermore, a significant number of English.
Portuguese and Dutch loanwords, too, typically referring to European concepts and articles, show themselves in Malay, e.
bas (E) (AobusA.
, biskut (E) (AobiscuitA.
, grafik (E) (AographicA.
, biola (P) (AoviolinA.
, meja (P) (AotableA.
, paderi (P) (AoChristian priestA.
, rokok (D) (Aoto smokeA.
, sepanduk (D) (AobannerA.
, risiko (D) (AoriskA.
22 pp.
These are only a few examples.
however, they show the flexibility of Malay to incorporate foreign elements into its lexis, when it is needed, when novel concepts are introduced to its speakers.
Brunei Malay and some of its differences to Standard Malay Brunei Malay (Bahasa Melayu Brune.
, the Bruneian dialect of Malay, is spoken not only in Brunei Darussalam, but also in neighboring Malaysia, particularly in the districts Limbang.
Lawas and Miri of Northeastern Sarawak, in certain parts of SabahAos Interior Division (Beaufort.
Kuala Penyu.
Sipitan.
and on Labuan Island (Clynes, 2001.
Jaludin Chuchu 2008: 7 However, the impact of the Malay dialect in question is further-reaching: In a paper.
Collins .
has proven the suggestion of Wolff .
, i.
that there are Brunei Malay loanwords in Tagalog (Philippine.
, and he .
) also puts forward the idea that the Bacan language (Bacanese.
Bacanese Mala.
in Maluku .
astern Indonesi.
is in all likelihood an archaic offshoot of Brunei Malay, although not being mutually intelligible any more.
In Brunei Darussalam itself, 60 % of the population at the least, the ethnic Malays speak this dialect as their native tongue, and many of these speakers reside in or around Bandar Seri Begawan, the However, it is important to note that Brunei Malay is spoken by other ethnic groups as well, either as a second language or as a mother tongue (Fatimah Awang Chuchu 2.
Indigenous languages that are spoken in the country include Kedayan .
ts vocabulary shares a high number of lexical cognates with Brunei Malay, s.
Dusun.
Bisaya.
Tutong.
Belait.
Murut .
lso known as Lun Bawan.
Iban.
Mukah and Penan (Bakar, 2.
whereas the local ethnic Chinese minority talk in Mandarin .
n school.
Hokkien.
Hakka and in Cantonese.
English is, furthermore, broadly spoken in the sultanate (Ramlee Tinkong, 2.
From a linguistic perspective, the Malay dialect of Brunei can be divided into three subgroups: .
Brunei Malay which itself consists of Standard Brunei Malay .
s used in royal speeches, in administration, in literature, on TV, etc.
) and its spoken varieties.
Kedayan, the language .
r the Malay dialec.
spoken by the Kedayans, an ethnic group.
Kampung Ayer, the language of older Malays living in the Water Village.
Whether Kedayan should be considered as a separate language, opinions might differ.
however, according to Nothofer .
(Clynes, 2.
, its core vocabulary overlaps with that of spoken Brunei Malay to 94-95 %.
, and the same can be said about the dialect of Kampung Ayer.
Standard Brunei Malay shows a considerably high similarity to the standard variety of Malay in Malaysia, albeit tout de suit noticeable phonetic-phonological, grammatical and lexical differences.
The most conspicuous and audible difference is the following phenomenon: Standard Malay has six vowels: i, e, a, u, o and o .
id central vowe.
(Mahmood & Abdullah 2013.
Nazir & Alias, 2013.
Winckel,1.
, and their different realizations (Fokker, 1.
counted eleven of them in his Malay Phonetic.
yet Brunei Malay has notably only three vowels, namely: a, i and u.
Thus, words like berat (AoheavyA.
or benar (AocorrectA.
will become barat and banar when pronounced.
Also loanwords will contain only these three vowels.
Moreover, in faster speech, weakening or even the complete deletion of h might occur in the onset of words or in the coda of word-final syllables: hantar (Aoto sendA.
Ae antar, boleh (Aoto be ableA.
Ae buli.
Morphologically, verbs can occasionally have both the locative suffix Aei and the causative / benefactive suffix Aekan at the same time: panas-i-kan (Aoto heat up something for someoneA.
, bali-hi-kan (Aoto buy something for someoneA.
(Jaludin Chuchu 1994, 1997.
Clynes 2001: .
As for syntax, we can observe a strong tendency to move the verb to the left periphery of the sentence, changing the word order from subject-verbobject (SVO) to verb-subject-object (VSO).
Research Method Brunei Malay and its varieties .
he high register and the spoken varietie.
, like Standard Malay and other Malay dialects too do, have a significant amount of loanwords.
These lexical elements were borrowed during contacts with other cultures and languages.
and, ultimately, after lexicalization .
nd assimilation in terms of phonetics-phonology, morphology, etc.
) they were absorbed into the native Brunei Malay vocabulary Ae to that extent that the majority of native speakers do not recognize them as borrowings any more.
Whereas a big number of publications on loanwords in Standard Indonesian and Standard Malay is available (Jones, 2.
, this is unfortunately not the case for Brunei Malay.
To our knowledge, apart from a blog entry listing a few loanwords from English (Deterding, 2.
and an article on the adoption of English idioms (Syamsuar & Aditya Rizkiana 2.
, no other work addresses the topic of lexical borrowings in Brunei Malay.
Our study aims to fill this gap by identifying English.
Arabic and Chinese loanwords in the lexis.
We hypothesized that we would find predominantly nouns and that the other word classes would be less in numbers .
r eventually absent from the corpu.
, although we expected to find some verbs as well.
Due to the fact that English.
Arabic and Chinese came into contact with Brunei Malay in different times and contexts, the lexical borrowings from these languages range over different topics as well.
however, a detailed thematic AumappingAy would go beyond the scope of the current paper.
It is sufficient to say that loanwords from English stem from the last two centuries when the country was a British protectorate between 1888 and 1984.
hence, oftentimes, they are related to technical innovations.
As for Arabic loanwords, for the most part, they are Islamic terms .
oncepts, acts of worship, names of days and month.
, probably brought to the Malay Archipelago and Brunei by Muslim traders from India .
rom Gujarat or from the Sout.
or the Arab world .
here is no consensus on the matte.
as early as in the eleventh century (Ramlee Tinkong 2.
Chinese loanwords on the other hand refer to food and everyday items in the Chinese culture.
yet the time of their borrowing is difficult to estimate as the first Chinese sources mentioning Brunei, and thus, the first contacts date back to the eleventh century.
At this point, there are no searchable online corpora of Brunei Malay texts that would allow us a detailed analysis of frequency .
ccurrence of loanword.
, and the only dictionary of Brunei Malay is Kamus Bahasa Melayu Brunei of Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka Brunei (Language and Literature Burea.
which is currently available in its second edition .
ublished in 2.
and contains some 15.
000 lexical entries.
Thus, this work of reference was chosen as the corpus for our study, in which we tried to identify loanwords.
some cases, the dictionary labels English loanwords as Ig.
in other cases, the Ig index is missing.
Arabic and Chinese loanwords are not labelled as such.
In our analysis of the data, we focused on .
percentage distribution of loanwords between the three languages and on .
which word class these items belong to.
In latter case, we experienced some difficulties, because some words can fit into two categories, e.
urin (AoorangeA.
could be, depending on the context, a fruit .
or a color .
Ae in such cases, we considered these words as nouns.
help the reader make himself a picture of the usage of these lexical borrowings in everyday contexts, a few examples with sample sentences in Brunei Malay and their English translation will follow our analysis.
To enable further work with the data, in the appendix of our paper we make the complete list of English.
Arabic and Chinese loanwords in Brunei Malay accessible.
Findings In total we found 503 words that could be recognized as loanwords from Arabic.
English and Chinese in the lexis of Brunei Malay in Kamus Bahasa Melayu Brunei:
Figure 1.
Loanwords in Brunei Malay Table 1.
Loanwords according to languages Loanwords Distribution Percent Arabic English Chinese Total Figure 1 and table 1 above show the distribution of loanwords from the three languages.
According to the data, 313 words or 62.
2% of the words were borrowed from the Arabic language, 181 words or 36% were borrowed from English and 9 words or 1.
8% were borrowed from Chinese.
All these words can be categorized into a few word classes such as below:
WORD CLASSES
Verb
Adjective ARABIC
ENGLISH
Noun
CHINESE
Figure 2.
Word Classes Table 2.
Distribution of word classes Arabic Language English Language Chinese Language Words Classes Distribution Percent Distribution Percent Distribution Percent Noun Verb Adjective TOTAL Table 2 and diagram 2 show the distribution of loanwords into different word classes.
Based on the data, loanwords from these languages can be categorized into three word classes.
Loanwords that can be categorized as nouns are: 212 words or 68.
4% from the Arabic language.
158 words or 89% from English and 7 words or 77.
8% from Chinese.
Nouns represent the highest number of words borrowed.
A few contextual examples of these words can be found below:
Arabic Language Amis (A )CIOA IOA- Thursday Brunei Malay AuAri Amis ani anak si Kasum kan balarai tu ka Singapura.
Ay Translation This Thursday KasumAos son will fly to Singapore.
English Language Ijus - Car exhaust Brunei Malay AuBasar jua bunyi ijus matuka si Sagap atu!Ay Translation SagapAos car exhaust was so loud! Chinese Language Angpow (UI) - Red packet .
small envelope with mone.
Brunei Malay AuKan minta angpow ku dari nini karang eh.
Ay Translation I will ask grandfather for a red packet later.
Some nouns could be used as verbs or adjectives too, depending on the context:
Example 1 Bikium - Vacuum Brunei Malay AuRusak sudah tu bikium merah atu.
Ay Tranlastion That red vacuum is already broken.
Brunei Malay AuSudah kau bikium bilik ani? Kamah masih usulnya.
Ay Translation Have you vacuumed this room? It still looks dirty.
Urin - Orange Brunei Malay AuBanyak bah buah urin bajual di pasar buah pagi tadi.
Ay Translation There are a lot of oranges being sold at the fruit market this Brunei Malay AuMakai baju .
urin bah si Ali hari ani.
Ay Translation Ali is wearing an orange shirt today Example 2 The second most prominent word class in the corpus is verbs.
We found 62 words or 19.
from the Arabic language, 21 words or 11.
6% from English and 1 word or 11.
1% from Chinese in this category.
Some examples of these words in context can be seen below:
Arabic Language Ijap (A )OAA- Afraid Brunei Malay AuIjap ku si Ali atu kakal mamurancah sampai tangah ari aniAy Translation IAom afraid Ali is still sleeping until this noon.
English Language Cas - Charge Brunei Malay AuBacas sudah talipaun mu atu?Ay English Have you charged your phone? Chinese Language Tapau (UI BA.
- Pack Brunei Malay AuBah, tapau bagus nasi ani untuk makan malam karang.
Ay Translation Ok.
I think it is better to pack this rice for dinner later.
Adjectives are the least represented word class found in this study.
According to the data, loanwords that can be categorized as adjectives are: 39 words or 12.
5% from the Arabic language, 2 words or 1.
1% from English and only 1 word or 11.
1% from Chinese.
Some examples in contexts are below:
Arabic Language Ayal (A )OEA- Too fun .
ntil you forget everythin.
Brunei Malay AuJangan luan ayal bamain mubail mu atu!Ay Translation DonAot have too much fun playing with your mobile phone! English Language Sintar - Centre Brunei Malay AuMacam inda lagi sintar akalnya anak ani!Ay Translation This childAos mind doesnAot seem to be AucentreAy .
Chinese Language ngam .
Ae Just right in Cantonese Brunei Malay AuNgam jua taim kitani sampai di rumah si Awang atu ah.
Ay Translation Our time arriving at AwangAos house was just right Conclusions In our study, we could identify more than 500 loanwords from English.
Arabic and Chinese in Brunei Malay.
Whereas Arabic and English together represented 98 % of the lexical borrowings.
Chinese supplied solely 2 %.
These lexical items, like it is often the case in other languages as well, are mostly nouns with a considerably lower number of verbs and even less other word classes were not represented in the corpus.
These words are already fully lexicalized, i.
their pronunciation .
nly a-u-i vowels, predominantly consonant-vowel units, avoidance of long consonant cluster.
, orthography and usability .
uffixation to form certain word classe.
are AulocalizedAy, and native speakers do not consider them as foreign words in the lexis any more.
English loanwords are often from the technical domain.
Arabic borrowings are related to religion and religious practices (Isla.
, whereas Chinese loanwords refer to food or elements of the Chinese culture.
In the future, this study could be extended to lexical borrowings from Sanskrit and other languages as well, to understand how these loanwords shaped the landscape of Brunei Malay.
REFERENCES