Brunei Darussalam

Assalamu'alaikum semua!

Hope everyone is doing fine. :) Don't know what else there is to post, so decided to post something about our beloved country, Brunei! First of all, to those who don't know how to pronounce Brunei, it's pronounced as "bru-nai". During my time in York, I hear a lot of people pronouncing it as how it's spelled. Totally understandable though given the spelling. HAHAHAHAHA! XD

Another "fun-fact", if I may call it so, is that our official language was declared to be Malay Language. Not many people know of its existence. If you are curious what Malay sound like, I was told that Malay sounds like Filipino. Although personally I think our rhythms are different, but I do agree that Malay and Filipino share a lot of vocabulary. Most probably because they were originally Malay before the Spanish rule. But that's just my speculation. :)

Despite Malay being our official language, we also have what people unofficially call it, 'Brunei slang'. Brunei slang differs slightly from the standard language (Malay), although Brunei vocabulary is very different from the standard language. *slang and vocabulary is different* Then there's also the ever-growing amount of catchphrases that we Bruneian youngsters always come up with.

An example of a catchphrase popular in Brunei is "Mas me ah!" or "Mas ku ah!". These two mean the same thing. We Bruneians like to deliberately use incorrect English grammar, mostly when we are joking or reacting to something sarcastically. So the 'me' in "Mas me ah!" means 'me' in English and is pronounced as it is in English. There rest of the words are pronounced as it's spelled. 'Ku' in "Mas ku ah" means 'me' in Malay.  'Mas' is actually short for 'malas' which means 'lazy'. So, in other words, the sentence actually means "I am lazy". But considering the emotion put into saying the catchphrase, a more correct meaning would be "I'm too lazy for this!". You can use this catchphrase when you don't want to do something or when your friend cracks a joke and it wasn't funny but most of the time, people use it as a reaction to something ridiculously funny, so despite having sort of what I personally think is a 'rude' meaning when translated to English, it isn't. The catchphrase naturally becomes a reaction to something funny for Bruneians. :)

So there you go! Congratulations dear readers from other countries! You have learned something new! Yehet! That's it for today. Have a nice day!

XOXO