Lexis

This chapter begins with a discussion of the distribution of loanwords in the Bruneian press, which were described in the 2013 edition as having been from Malay and Arabic and are used particularly for Islamic matters and also for referring to the activities of the royal family. In five editions of the Borneo Bulletin and five of now-defunct The Brunei Times from 2011, 258 tokens of words borrowed from Malay and Arabic were found, 167 of them being for religious terms such as doa (‘prayer’) and taqwa (‘piety’). Among the terms for royal activities, the most common are titah (‘speech by the Sultan’) and sabda (‘speech by a prince or other senior royal’). This practice of using borrowed words for religious matters and royal customs continues today and has also included items which are tied to local food and culture and which have no direct equivalent in the English-speaking world such as bubur lambuk (‘spiced rice porridge’), ayam serama (a breed of chicken known for its small stature), and hari raya (‘celebrate day’). In addition, the chapter discusses some calques from Malay such as ‘four-eye meeting’ and ‘mouse trail’, a few acronyms such as RIPAS and UNISSA, the widespread occurrence of initialisms such as UBD, KB, MIB and GOFR, some words with a semantic shift such as ‘bring’ and ‘send’, and a few neologisms such as ‘cager’ and ‘darter’ for sports personnel and ‘blue screen’ to mean a televised announcement of a new high-post governmental promotion. Also discussed are the rampant use of slang in the informal speech of young Bruneians, where Americanisms such as ‘deadass’ and ‘no cap’ occur frequently in conversations among friends, but are markedly absent when the interactants are or include those from the older generation.