A vocabulary of Brunei Malay
H. B. Marshall, a prospector working in the State of Brunei, compiled this 505-word vocabulary of Brunei Malay over several years at the suggestion of W. H. Lee-Warner, then Assistant Resident, and published it in 1921 with extensive comparative annotations by J. C. Moulton, Director of the Raffles Museum, Singapore. The central finding, advanced by Moulton in his prefatory notes, is that the majority of Brunei Malay lexical items have clear parallels in Sarawak Malay, Malay Peninsula Malay, or Dayak languages, leaving only about 35 per cent as genuinely distinctive Brunei words for which etymological connections remain to be established (p. 45).
Summary
The document is a numbered lexical list covering a broad semantic range: nautical and boat-building terminology, fishing methods and implements, domestic architecture, flora and fauna, body parts, musical instruments, mining vocabulary, and everyday verbs and adjectives. Each entry gives the Brunei Malay form, a gloss or equivalent in standard Malay, and in many cases a brief usage example or a short verse (p. 45–74). The vocabulary reflects the material culture of a riverine, maritime society—terms for specific boat types (bidar, pakarangan, tongkang), fishing traps (kelong, selambau, sadak), and the detailed anatomy of a bidar (frames, keelson, rudder types, caulking seams) are particularly well represented.
Moulton’s annotation system is the document’s principal scholarly contribution. He marks each word with ‘S’ if it is also used in that form and sense in Sarawak, ‘W’ if it appears in Wilkinson’s Malay Dictionary, and provides footnoted parallels and possible derivations. He further incorporates 24 new words supplied by Lee-Warner and 23 from C. N. Maxwell’s 1893 list compiled at Limbang, bringing the total beyond Marshall’s original 505 (p. 45). Moulton’s assessment is that the residue of truly Brunei-specific vocabulary is “comparatively small” and that this number “can be still further reduced without much difficulty,” while acknowledging that “undoubtedly many more peculiar Brunei words to be recorded” remain (p. 45).
The list also preserves a number of short Brunei Malay verses—romantic, didactic, and descriptive—embedded as illustrative examples, which provide valuable evidence of the language’s poetic register and metrical conventions (e.g., pp. 49, 50, 53, 64, 72).
Key Findings
- The vocabulary comprises 505 base entries, supplemented by 24 words from Lee-Warner and 23 from Maxwell’s 1893 Limbang list, for a total of approximately 552 items (p. 45).
- Approximately 35 per cent of the words lack an ‘S’ or ‘W’ marker or a footnote, representing the core of genuinely distinctive Brunei Malay lexicon (p. 45).
- Brunei measures are documented: 1 babat = 10 kayu = $1.40; 1 kayu = 40 panggal (pp. 48, 64–65).
- The vocabulary records three distinct rudder types: kemudi si-babau (operated from the bows), kemudi sepak (the standard Malay rudder with forked pampang support), and the kaskul (the Sultan’s lenguai or sireh stand, a term of royal specificity) (pp. 48, 58, 64).
- Only three specimens of the gusi jar—a six-handled earthenware vessel believed by Brunei Malays to have been made and buried by spirits—are said to exist in Brunei (p. 57).
- The term padián designates the Brunei water-market, while pengalu refers to the “ulu” market, indicating a dual market system (p. 64).
Conclusion
Marshall’s vocabulary, as annotated by Moulton, establishes that Brunei Malay is not a sharply isolated dialect but sits within a continuum of Bornean Malay varieties, with substantial lexical overlap with Sarawak Malay and the Malay Peninsula. The genuinely distinctive core is modest, and the work functions as a baseline against which future fieldwork can measure the full extent of Brunei’s particular lexical heritage.
Context
- Marshall compiled the list while prospecting in Brunei; the project was initiated by the colonial administrative officer W. H. Lee-Warner (Assistant Resident), reflecting the typical pattern of colonial-era linguistic documentation driven by administrative and commercial interest rather than linguistic theory (p. 45).
- The comparative framework relies on Wilkinson’s Malay Dictionary and Moulton’s own knowledge of Sarawak Malay, with advice from H. B. Crocker of the Sarawak Civil Service; no systematic fieldwork methodology is described beyond Marshall’s travel-based collection (p. 45).