Brunei Malay

Brunei Malay (ISO 639-3: kxd) is spoken in the Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam and also in some nearby places in East Malaysia such as Miri and Limbang in Sarawak (Asmah 2008: 65), on the island of Labuan (Jaludin 2003: 35) and around Beaufort in western Sabah (Saidatul 2003). Of the population of about 400,000 in Brunei, about two-thirds are native speakers of Brunei Malay (Clynes 2001), and the language is generally used as a lingua franca between the other ethnic groups (Martin 1996), so even most Chinese Bruneians, numbering about 45,000 (Dunseath 1996), are reasonably proficient in Brunei Malay. Although Standard Malay is promoted as the national language of Brunei (Clynes & Deterding 2011), in fact it is only used in formal situations, such as government speeches and television and radio broadcasts (Martin 1996). The language that is spoken most extensively is Brunei Malay, though English is also widely used by the educated elite (Deterding & Salbrina 2013).