Plosives and Affricates
The plosives /p, b/, /t, d/ and /k, g/ are voiceless/voiced pairs. In many varieties of Malay, /t/ is dental rather than alveolar, though not in Brunei. /k/ is velar in syllable onsets. In codas it has velar or uvular realisations, for example in the North Wind and the Sun recording terpaksa [təɾpaksɐ̝] ‘forced’ and memeluk [məməlʊq] ‘hug’. (Realisation of final /k/ as [ʔ] is also sometimes found, due to influence from Peninsular Malay or Indonesian.) Voiceless plosives are generally unreleased in syllable codas, for example word-finally in bilik [bilek̚] 'room', meniup [məniʊp̚] 'blow', or before a clitic, as in sekuatnya [skwat̚ɲa] ‘as strongly as possible’.
As in other standard varieties, /p, t, k/ are normally unaspirated. However this speaker at times aspirates them quite markedly. This is a feature of the speech of broadcasters in Brunei (Poedjosoedarmo 1996), due to influence from English. It has not been reported for other registers in Brunei.
The voiced plosives do not occur in syllable codas in the native lexis, and are usually replaced with their voiceless counterparts in loanwords, for example, menyebabkan [məɲəbapkʰan] ‘cause’, where the root sebab [səbap] ‘cause’ is a loan from Arabic. The speaker nonetheless unexpectedly partially voices the final /t/’s in two Arabic loanwords, khidmat [χɪdmad̥] 'service' and syarat [ʃaɾad̥] 'rule'.
/tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are phonetic affricates, though phonemically they pattern with the plosives. The speaker seems to give them a lamino-alveolar realisation, with a ‘noisy’ release (both possibly influenced by English), for example in jubah [dʒubah] ‘coat’ and memancarkan [məmaɲtʃaɾkʰan] ‘shine’ from the passage, rather than the less affricated, postalveolar realisation typical for example with many Indonesian speakers.